Drake rises slow and weak, his gelled hair unkempt, his black cape torn and hanging from one shoulder, his onyx wings limp down his back. He’s staring over at Claire and the boys, his face stricken. Dybbuk huddles behind him.
“I meant them no harm,” he mumbles. “It was only meant to intimidate you.” He turns, searching my eyes. “Why would Aidan bring Claire and Jacob here?”
“Bastard,” I spit through clenched teeth. “How dare you blame your fourteen year-old son? You did this. You risked your children’s lives to manipulate me!”
Scrambling to my feet and hugging my wrist to my chest I walk backwards to Claire and the boys, my eyes fixed on him.
My maidens drag themselves upright, limping forward cautiously, weapons drawn.
None of them has any Blaze left in their bodies. Less than a trickle remains in mine. I grab onto a flow of Keen, but I’m woozy, my mind thick, my body clumsy with overexertion.
And Drake can See. He knows we’re spent.
“Boys,” I whisper when I’m close enough. “Is Claire okay?”
“She’s breathing,” Jacob answers. “I think she fainted.”
“Aidan, you need to Travel back to the Second Realm and wake up. Right now. You need to get Claire out of here.”
“I’m trying, Emily.” He moans. “I can’t find the Path. I’m stuck.”
“Hold on to each other,” I say. “I’ll open a new Path, but I won’t be able to hold it long. You need to jump through as fast as you can, back to your dreaming bodies.”
“Hurry, Emily,” Twist shouts. “He’s coming.”
With my last strands of Blaze, I open a Pathway, stretching it as wide as I can with Keen.
“How will you get back?” Aidan demands, frantic.
“As soon as you end the dream, I think we’ll all wake up.”
“Please come with us, Emily,” Aidan begs.
I grab his head in my hands, pressing our foreheads together. “I can’t. I’m not ready yet.” I want to wrap my arms around all of them. I want to comfort them and take away the horror of this night. But there isn’t time. “I’ll come back soon, I promise.”
Jacob hoists Claire onto his shoulder. With his free arm he pushes Aidan through the opening. “They’re in the Beetle,” he says to me over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Over there,” he indicates the far wall, pointing with his nose. “When you sent me the weapons last time you were here I didn’t know what to do with them, so I hid them in that Beetle.”
Without turning my head, I spot a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle slumped against the far wall.
I could have sworn the garage had been empty before.
“Everyone’s out looking for you, Emily.” Jacob’s eyes weigh me. “Nancy told them you’d come back on your own, that you just needed some time. But you’ve been gone for days and you stopped answering your phone. No wonder Aidan’s having nightmares. I think he really believed the only reason you’d abandon him is if something terrible happened to you.”
Without another word, he crouches through the Pathway with Claire draped over his shoulder.
Stinging, exhausted, and heartsick, I drop the weaves. The opening snaps shut behind them.
Drake and Dybbuk stand stock-still, seemingly frozen in place only fifteen yards away. My maidens patrol the space between my enemies and me, their swords and daggers drawn.
“You know this isn’t over, don’t you, Dear One?” Drake taunts. “You tried to destroy my hiding place once before and you failed. You thought that speaking your truth would stop me, yet here I am.”
On the ground, the heavy black rope of our Connection writhes slow and pulsing between us. Drake’s footsteps echo weirdly off the graffiti-covered concrete walls as he advances toward me.
“Emily,” Teagan calls. “We need to get out of here.”
“I’m stronger than you, Dear One…”
Drake’s derisive words end in a curse as the garage grows immaterial around all of us.
“Emily?” Chloe’s voice is panicked.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Aidan must be waking up.”
“This is far from over, Daughter,” Drake shouts as darkness clouds my vision.
He’s right. I’ve defeated Aidan’s monsters, but only for one night. There are endless nights. Endless monsters.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Quiet. She needs to sleep.”
Teagan’s voice tugs at the place my ear would be if I had an ear…or a head…or any body at all. But I don’t. Instead of being trapped by overwhelming between-Realm fear, I’m tormented by a consuming confliction of desires. I need to go back to the garage to claim the weapons. I also need to continue with my maidens on our hidden beach. And, I need to return to my siblings. I can’t do all three.
But my Heart wants all three.
A faceless eye pressed up against a keyhole, I spy my maidens’ shushing each other from where they huddle around a small fire, sipping tea in the dim light of early dawn.
Chloe cradles the stolen Art of Combat book on her lap, with Twist practically climbing over her shoulder to see what’s on the page, and Teagan and Minali kneeling at her feet. They’re all whispering so they won’t wake me.
Several feet away my body sleeps. My marigold hair is barely visible at the top of the puffy sleeping bag zipped up to my forehead, just as it was when Aidan pulled me into his nightmare.
“Give me the book,” Twist insists in a volume that can be considered quiet for no one but her. “You don’t even know what you’re looking for, Chloe!”
“Oh. My. God. HUSH. She merged us, Twist. She defeated an entire army of monsters. She needs her sleep,” Teagan whisper-shouts. “I swear if you wake her up, I’ll hamstring you with your own throwing star.”
“It’s okay, Teagan. Twist can have it now.” Chloe stands, closing the book and shoving it at Twist, who nearly drops it. “I’ve already chosen my rune.”
A refracted mirage of the rune Uruz waivers infrared above Chloe’s head, like an especially brilliant idea.
I recognize it at once. It’s one of the runes in my last name, and if this mist-me had a mouth, I’d grin. Uruz: the wild ox. Wise, mild-mannered Chloe is perhaps the furthest thing from an ox I can imagine, but she is an untamed force of nature.
The one good thing to come from last night’s mayhem was discovering the importance of runes in battle. Without the binding power of Drake’s rune Isa, we wouldn’t have been able to merge.
Pride fizzes through all my scattered bits. After a hellish nightmare of a night, my maidens are awake before the sun, eagerly reviewing our weaknesses, studying our enemies’ strengths, and strategizing how to use them to make us stronger.
Wait. They’re choosing runes without me?
I need to wake up right now.
Trust your maidens, Emily, my Heart soothes. You do need to heal. Let go—just for a little while—just long enough for your scattered energy to settle, to rearrange and coalesce into the Shield Maiden you’ve become. Rest, for there is much work to be done.
***
I wake to glorious wild: the sun at its zenith, my maidens lettering each other head to toe in the glyph-charms of their chosen runes using a combination of white and brown henna, and the ripe purple-red garnet of a mashed berry paste.
The aroma of bright, fruity sweetness combined with the sharp tang of herbs invigorates me. Unzipping my sleeping bag, I point my toes toward the forested cliffs and stretch my arms opposite to the sea: fingers grasping sky, lungs gulping sunshine.
My sparkling dust has settled into an alloy of liquid light and solid gratitude.
We are alive. We are together.
“She’s awake!” Minali shouts.
My maidens come running with bowls of water, berries, cloves, lavender oil, and henna powder. They kneel around me.
“Emily,” Chloe says. “We know you’re anxious to get back to Aidan and Claire. But we’ve learned some really important thin
gs about runes.”
“They’ll make us so much stronger, Emma,” Teagan cuts in. “If we learn how to use them correctly, we can sustain our Blaze while we weave. We won’t become depleted.”
“Are you serious?” I ask, scrambling to a seated position, excitement thumping in my chest. This could be huge.
“Very serious,” Minali confirms. “What if we practice with the runes for the rest of the day and break camp tomorrow morning? We’ll all go back to the castle and face the Queen together?”
“And then,” Twist growls, “when Drake comes calling? We’ll mow him down together.”
“Teach me what you’ve learned,” I say.
Pulling me up into half lotus pose, Teagan, Minali, and Twist dip their fingers in the little bowls and paint every available inch of me in the lines and curves and swirls of the symbols they’ve chosen.
While they cover me in war paint, I’m given a crash course in the thaumaturgy of runes. My head spins. I had no idea such primitive, pagan symbols could be so complicated.
Each rune has its own inherent meanings from which insights can be gleaned and specific energetic capacities fortified. Runes can be grouped together to create a certain spell, or cast—by chance—to receive divination. They can be worn as charms of Magic or amulets of protection.
Chloe sets The Art of Combat on my lap and opens it, pointing to the rune I used in last night’s battle. I read aloud:
“Isa: (I: Ice.) Clearly beautiful but terrifyingly lethal. Calm, cool, collected egomania. Absolute stillness and clarity. Concentrated focus of sheer will. Unyielding, unstoppable. Cold. Destructive. Dangerous. This rune reinforces those runes around it.
The frosty ghost of Drake’s chill breath skims the nape of my neck. “‘Cold. Destructive. Dangerous,’” I shiver. “That’s Drake, all right.”
“It’s a very powerful binding rune, as you discovered,” Chloe says. “But it’s kind of twisted. You can always choose a different one, if you want.”
“Sometimes a little twisted is just the thing, don’t you think?” A malevolent eagerness shines in Twist’s eyes.
“You don’t have to claim it, Emily. But it’s there whenever you need it, like you did last night.”
Impatiently, Twist flips the page, tapping a large red H. “Check out mine, Ems. You don’t need to read the whole thing, just the parts I’ve underlined.”
“Hagalaz: (H: Hail.) Deeply impersonal force of nature. Powerfully feminine, violently disruptive, force of necessary destruction. Fuel for inner growth.
“Yikes.” I swallow a queasy chewing-gum wad of uncertainty. “Twist. Are you sure we should be playing around with stuff like this?”
“We’re not playing, Emily.” Twist chews up my doubt and spits it out with the acid in her voice. “This isn’t a game. It’s war.”
“Remember who our enemy is, Emily,” Minali says. “Drake has proven exactly how sick and depraved he can be. He’ll use any tactic he can think of to demolish you. There’s no room for nice in this war.”
“Which one did you choose?” I ask Minali.
‘”If we must fight for peace then let us find our peace in battle,’” Minali quotes from The Art of Combat, indicating the rune Thurisaz.
“Thurisaz: (TH: Thorn or a Giant.) Psychological warfare. Force of destruction. Thorny discipline. Enemy of unconsciousness. Protection from ignorance. Essence of discipline. Resilient awakening. Fortuitous luck. Channel of defense.
“Psychological warfare,” I say. “That’s—”
“Badass, right?” Minali finishes my sentence.
Before I can answer, Chloe slides her finger down the page, stopping at Uruz. “This one’s mine.”
“Uruz: (U: Auroch, a wild ox.) Primal life force. Determined strength. Informing passion. Unleashed willpower. Instinctual creativity. Formidable grit. Enduring courage. Untamed prowess and raw tenacity.”
“Is it just me, or have we all chosen violent, potentially dangerous, masculine runes?” I ask.
“When in Rome,” Minali grins.
“Mine isn’t quite so brutal,” Teagan says. Resting her head on my henna-tattooed shoulder, she reads aloud from halfway down the next page:
“Kenaz: (K: Beacon or torch.) Harnessed power. Fiery spirit. Craftsman of weapons. Controlled strength. Taming the savage. Internal flame of creativity.”
With the exception of Teagan’s, there’s nothing nice about the runes any of us have chosen, at least not the aspects we’re intending to embody.
“We have to be ready to crush any opposition,” Twist says as though reading my thoughts. “Like you did in the garage, Ems. No more messing around.”
“She’s right,” Minali agrees. “It’s black or white. Anyone who isn’t helping us is hurting us. If we’d obliterated Drake and Dybbuk last night, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about fighting them again.”
Teagan has been silent for several minutes, braiding my hair with her gentle-quick fingers. “What do you think about all this?” I ask her.
“I think you’ve always had this power inside you,” she says proudly. “Seeing all the ways your power can be destructive spelled out to you in a book might be scary, but it doesn’t really change anything because it’s always been there…you just didn’t have the words and symbols for it. Now you do, and you’re learning to speak the language. Runes can give you the ability and the authority to communicate the things in your heart, to communicate what you agree and don’t agree to, whether anyone asks for consent or not. I think this new language will give you a strong new voice. A Shield Maiden’s voice.”
Never have I felt more brave, sitting here with the multi-colored henna runes of my maidens baking into my skin by the warmth of the big yellow sun, surrounded and supported by their belief in me.
We are linked by our Purpose, by our shared experience. We are linked by the strength we each bring to the table. Together we’re unstoppable.
“There’s a lot to do and not much time.” I put my hand in front of me and they each cover mine with theirs. I stand, pulling my maidens up with me. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
What was intended to be one day of training has turned into three…three breathless days immersed in thaumaturgy. The sun and moon blur indistinguishably into a single lambent disc of effulgent luster, illuminating our tireless tuition.
Today—the third day—we’re forced to stop and pack-up. We’ve eaten the last chunk of hard cheese, divided our final two withered apples, and I don’t care how many derisive insults Minali goads me with, I still refuse to dine on sandy seaweed.
I miss my brothers and sister. Aidan hasn’t had any more Third Realm nightmares that I’ve sensed, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t anxious. With the exception of my stint in detox, my sister and brothers have never been without me for so long. I’ve been meditating several times each day as part of our training, and when I close each session I send them loving, peaceful energy. But I’m not getting any kind of communication back, and being away from them this long is weakening, and I need to be strong.
An earsplitting squawk shreds the quiet afternoon. Something—or someone—has triggered our wards.
My sisters don’t panic, and even though my pulse spikes, neither do I.
It’s as if our training has given us a two second buffer…the kind they use for live TV specials in case something inappropriate happens that the producers want to edit out.
I’m up the side of the cliff a ways above the tide pools, dismantling our sauna and all signs to leave no trace that we were ever here.
Below, our camp appears half deserted. The sleeping bags have been rolled up, the ashes from the fire spread evenly within the stone perimeter.
My maidens raise their heads from their chores: Chloe rinsing the coffee pot and cups from our light breakfast; Minali and Teagan carefully pulling apart our driftwood shelter; Twist near the tree line on the hill opposite the beach from me scattering our stack of kindling amongst th
e pines.
Despite the urgent blaring, I take a moment to commit the scene to memory. I don’t ever want to forget the languid-bronze movements of my sisters who blend so completely with their environment, lionesses disturbed from their tasks. They are alert, watchful, seemingly defenseless, but I can see the effortless power couched beneath their glossy sun-kissed skin.
Without even a glance up the hill behind her, Twist stands and Channels Intention to silence the ward. Unhurried she descends the slope, joining Chloe, Minali, and Teagan as they move instinctively toward me. We gather at the base of the cliff behind the boulders that sit several yards above the beach and provide the best vantage and cover in our cove.
My sisters and I ready ourselves to weave, gathering Blaze and pooling it in our bloodstreams.
“Giant sand crab?” Teagan jokes. She and Minali position themselves at either of my elbows. Twist is directly in front of me and Chloe stands at my back facing outward. Their wingtips overlap, forming a configuration we call Sundial: Four movable weapons that work in endless combination of attack or defense, depending on the command rune I choose.
“What do you See, Ems?” Twist scans the tree line.
I join the Spark in my chest, layering my three Eyes. With a bounce of Blaze from each chakra I spring beyond my edges, soaring up and out above the valley.
Our invaders are easy to spot. Bewildered by the sound of the alarm, they crouch behind a group of pine at the top of the path leading down the hill.
I squint to make sure I’m not hallucinating. “It’s Jacob and Gabe.” Shock vibrates through my vocal chords, the last people I’d expect to see. “I think the ward made them pee their pants.”
Unexpected tenderness spreads through my disparate parts as I look at Jacob. I can’t help loving and missing him, even if his doubt and judgment hurts me more and more.
And Gabe. I swear his hair catches sunlight like a butterfly net. Do his chest and shoulders stretch his shirt tighter than the last time I saw him?
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