Sound returned in waves, fading then strengthening. The pooka snorted a challenge. Her own breathing came raspy and panicked.
Between one blink and the next, the sun warmed her skin again.
Lillian lay upon damp ground, the sky overhead was a bright blue with the occasional fluffy cloud. To judge by the color of the sky, she was still on Earth. She sat up and glanced around. The trees were of a familiar type, but instinct said she was elsewhere, Gregory a long way off.
Thinking of him allowed Gregory into her mind. “Lillian! Don’t do this. Use your power and fight them. Escape.”
“I’m sorry, Gregory. I’m remembering. This is the only way to stop the demons and kill the darkness within me. The Lady of Battles does not share. When the Riven use their death magic to steal my power, the Lady will destroy them as I die.”
“Please don’t do this. I’ll find another way.”
She dragged in a steadying breath, nearly a sob. “Oh, Gregory. I can’t be the Lady’s slave, and I won’t let her use me to enslave you. This is the only way.”
“I just need a little more time.”
“Only the Divine Ones can help me now. Goodbye, my soul.” Lillian closed her mind to Gregory, and he was gone. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. He didn’t understand. Not yet. Perhaps one day he’d forgive her.
She forced thoughts of Gregory from her mind and looked around.
Wherever she was, she was in another small clearing with no obvious path or game trail leading in or out. A small stream was the only landmark. It cut through the glade before disappearing into the shadowy tree line at the north end of the meadow. The demon boy was walking away from her, toward the stream.
“We have traveled far.” The pooka sounded fearful.
It couldn’t be a good sign if one of the monsters was afraid.
Secretly, she was relieved they had relocated. It would take Gregory longer to hunt her down. And she needed as much time as possible.
“This way.” The demon boy gestured toward a stream at the far end of the clearing. Lillian obeyed, and the pooka paced her, his ears pinned and his head high. He shied when they approached the stream.
The stream seemed normal enough upon first glance until she noticed the yellowing grass along the bank and the wilted marsh marigolds, which looked like they were turning to slime. She felt it then, the weight of mortality. Death in its purest essence flowed along with the waters of the stream. The sickly-sweet odor of disease wafted from the slow-moving water. Other signs of stress marked the route the stream took. The brown of dead grass flanked the stream in wide swaths. Along the northern edge of the glade, the evergreens were blackened, their needles dropping when the breeze plucked them from their branches. It was an eerie sight. Like all the color had leached out of the world.
“What could do this?” she asked the pooka.
“You ask me? I haven’t been to the Magic Realm in many, many centuries. Perhaps you should ask that question of yourself. It is a working of great magic. Close kin of yours, maybe?”
“Thanks for the help.”
“Always happy to help one of the Avatars.”
She could almost taste his sarcasm. “You’re an ass.”
The demon boy led them deeper into the woods. More dead trees to her left outlined the meandering path the stream cut through the forest. After walking for another ten minutes, she spotted a cabin through the trees. Dire wolves stood as silent sentinels among the trees.
Four of the dark-furred wolves ghosted out of the underbrush to flank her and the pooka as they made their way to the cabin. One dire wolf paced so close his fur brushed her arm, but he seemed unaware of his surroundings. She glanced sideways at him, studying his milky eyes. If she’d had more time, she would have tried to free him from the demon’s influence. Now all there’d be time for was a swift death. She hoped.
When they reached the cabin, half the guards remained outside with the pooka, but the others followed Lillian within. Inside, the main room was covered in thick carpeting. Two bent-willow chairs and a sofa with a crocheted throw sat in front of a vast mantle. A fire burned in the fireplace, chasing away the chill of the spring dampness. It was a lovely cabin, and for a moment she grieved for the ones who had lived here. Surely, they were dead. But they would be avenged as soon as her brother and the pooka were safely away.
The demon boy continued to the very back of the cabin to a small bedroom. Within, her brother lay trussed up. He turned pale when he saw her. A gag prevented him from speaking, but the fear and grief in his eyes needed no words. Jason blamed himself for her capture.
“It’s all right, Jason. You’re going to leave with the pooka. He’ll get you to safety.” She knelt on the floor next to him. He was shaking his head back and forth. Lillian placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be over soon. Don’t worry about me. This is my fault, and I’ll make it right. I’ll follow when I can.” She turned back to the creature pretending to be a child. “Release my brother.”
In case he decided to change his side of the bargain, she drew the demon blade across her wrist while summoning the magic of the Spirit Realm. And like the time Gregory had done it, cold filled the room, causing her breath to fog in the air.
The demon hissed and leaped back. “You promised no tricks.”
She laughed. “A demon complaining about deceit—how ironic. Don’t worry. It’s just a precaution. Stick to your side of the bargain and all will go well. If you don’t...” She let her sentence die but reached outside to where the pooka waited and whispered her plan into his mind.
“Once you and my brother are far enough away, I’ll see if I can kill everything in a two-kilometer radius.”
“Your brother and the pooka are free to go.” The demon boy bowed to her, then straightened and took a step back toward the door. He made no move to bolt, so she turned her attention back to Jason. She had planned to give him her crossbow, so he would have a weapon, but there was rebellion in his eyes. Time for a new plan.
“Please tie my brother to the pooka’s back. I doubt he’ll go willingly.”
“As you wish.” The boy gestured and two demons wearing adult bodies picked up Jason and carried him out to the pooka.
The black pony was nervous, but still waited where she’d left him. He could have fled. He had the power, yet he stayed.
“Thank you.”
When the pooka approached the cabin’s porch, she leaned over the railing and laid her hand on his shoulder, sharing some of her power with him, strengthening him for the return journey.
“Run fast, swifter than death. I’ll give you as much time as I can. Please try to save my brother.”
“You never planned to return to the Magic Realm.”
“No. I plan to return to the Spirit Realm—and somehow, I don’t think that is where you want to go.”
“Traitorous dryad.” He snorted and pawed at the ground, his yellow eyes gleaming with rage.
“Your loyalty will be rewarded. Tell Gregory it was my wish that you make the journey with him when he returns to the Magic Realm.”
“And if the gargoyle doesn’t listen?”
“He’ll honor my last request.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes. Please tell him not to grieve. I’ll meet him again soon.”
The pooka bobbed his head.
She stayed in the cabin’s doorway, watching as the demons bundled her brother onto the pooka’s back. A yellow eye rolled back toward her. She nodded her head, and the pooka bolted into motion.
She tracked the pooka long after he was out of sight. He wasn’t followed, but she continued to stare at the trees where he and her brother had vanished for long moments. Each minute she stalled the evil ones, bettered the chance her brother had of escaping.
At last, she handed her crossbow to the demon. She no longer needed a physical weapon.
Fear was absent, and a strange thing was unfolding within her. Each time she’d called on magic, a sma
ll portion of her memories returned. Fragmented and chaotic, they were no help yet. But if the evil ones took too long to do whatever they planned, better possibilities might present themselves.
“Bring her,” the demon boy ordered.
Two male dire wolves, white eyes foggy and unseeing, approached her with their heads down, tails held limply behind them. She wondered once again what the demon child had done to them to make them serve. Her magic flared, and a memory surfaced of her gargoyle father looking out over a battlement, listless, head hanging.
She’d been a small child, four or five at most, and seeing her father like that had saddened her. He’d been “disciplined” after he’d tried to escape with her. She remembered her mother had been upset with the captains for resorting to soul-binding magic.
Trap a soul so that it could not gain strength from the Spirit Realm or a living body, and it would weaken. A weakened soul would, in turn, undermine rational thought, making the person more biddable. Her mother had called it one of the darkest forms of magic.
And the same spell—or a similar one—had been cast upon the two dire wolves approaching her. She moved away from the porch, allowing the big wolves to herd her toward the east side of the cabin. They continued to guide her until she was blocked on one side by the small creek.
Death magic rose from the water’s surface like fog, seeking and smothering life as it encountered it. She strengthened her shields another notch, even though the magic hadn’t been able to do more than brush along the curve of her shield before being repelled.
The demon child said nothing as it trailed along behind Lillian. She maintained a brisk pace, wanting to stay ahead of the demon. It sidled up next to her, perhaps sensing her unease. Then it tried to take her hand like a child would. She inched closer to the stream.
The scent of death wafted upon the breeze. But underlying that stench, there was a sweeter smell. Honeysuckle. And something else similar to sandalwood. Memories stirred.
A sense of peace, like returning home after a long life.
Impossible.
She took a deeper breath. Yes, she was certain. The Lord of the Underworld was near.
But how could that be? He was imprisoned in his own temple. Both Twins were by the duality curse. One sibling couldn’t walk free while the other was trapped. The Lady of Battles was still imprisoned. Lillian knew it in her heart—and yet she sensed the Lord of the Underworld near.
The death magic flowing from the water was deadly, but now it lacked the stench of evil. Strange. She tried to piece together the memories that told her why the magic in the water was dangerous but not evil, and they slipped away.
They entered the forest once again. Nothing living remained. Everything was dead. She mourned the trees and the wildflowers. Even the moss was dead.
“It didn’t like our tinkering and lashed out,” the demon said. “It killed a good half of us before we could get out of its range.”
“What didn’t like your tinkering?” Whatever “it” was, if it had killed half of these little monsters, she wanted to help it kill the other half.
“When we sacrifice you, it will be more biddable,” the demon called over its shoulder as it skipped ahead. It giggled and vanished around a bend in the path.
She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. Touching the demon was the only way to know for sure if it had possessed a child or merely shapeshifted to look like one. She didn’t want to get close enough to find out. Better not to know.
The footing became treacherous as the path narrowed. Boulders and rocks showed through the eroded soil like the bones of the earth. With her eyes on the rocky ground, she didn’t see she’d emerged into a new meadow until she finished climbing up the leaf-littered slope.
She blinked several times and still she didn’t understand what she saw. Trees laid broken and splintered like a hurricane had exploded out from the middle of the meadow. Branches and trunks were tossed haphazardly to form a dam of wooden shrapnel along the outer edge of the newly and violently cleared crater. At the center, someone had erected a monolith. She didn’t know what else to call it. It looked like a sword, a massive, twenty-foot sword. A giant’s weapon. By the way the point was embedded in the rocky soil, it looked like something had stabbed it down into the earth with a great deal of rage.
Its blade shimmered, eerie in the dim light. And if she was to approach it and run a finger along its blade, it looked sharp enough to cut off her hand. She shivered. The death magic was stronger here at the source.
Memory returned.
No, she’d been wrong. This great weapon didn’t belong to a giant. It belonged to a god. Memories from past lives unfolded, triggered by the sight of one of the Lord of the Underworld’s four swords.
In the memory, she and Gregory had returned victorious from a battle and were bringing a dangerous artifact back to the Lord of the Underworld for safe keeping. They’d bowed at his hooves, and he had towered over them, his horse’s body topped with a four-armed humanoid torso and a jackal-like head.
In another life, she’d not thought him strange—but now, all she could think was that he looked like a love child between Anubis and a centaur. He had horns and a flowing mane like a gargoyle, and she remembered Gregory had once said all gargoyles called the god of death their master. If this creature wasn’t fearsome enough on his own, having to walk between his four massive swords before kneeling at his hooves would have cowed most anything.
However, that time she and the gargoyle had nothing to fear from the Lord of the Underworld. He’d greeted them like friends, and she supposed they were. Being the god of death was a lonely duty, and like the gargoyles, he’d spent his existence alone.
“It rests, dormant as far as we can tell,” the demon said in its child’s voice.
Memories faded and she returned to the present. She still faced the massive sword.
The sword complicated her plan a bit.
“It may have used up its defenses, but we’re not risking ourselves on a guess,” the demon said. “But the sword will recognize you as the Goddess’s avatar. It won’t consider you a threat. And then we’ll use your blood to forge its new allegiance.”
She didn’t need to be told what their next step would be. They’d command the sword to tear a hole in the Veil between the Realms, and more demons would flood into this land. The Clan and the Coven would be the first casualties in the war.
And then there would be no one left to protect the humans of Earth.
Chapter 39
LILLIAN LET THEM HERD her toward a dead tree, one of only three still standing within sixty feet of the sword. The demons were careful to go no closer to the weapon. Come on Lil, you can do this. Act the helpless victim. Pretend you don’t have the knowledge to protect yourself. How hard can that be?
With jerky motions, they tied her to the tree’s blackened trunk, using a bit of nylon rope to secure her. The occasional anxious glance over their shoulders said they didn’t trust the sword’s serenity. She didn’t either.
An insubstantial current of magic swirled past her ankles on its way toward the sword. The great weapon siphoned power from the land, reclaiming some of the magic it had spent in the first attack. She didn’t think the demons sensed what it was doing, or she doubted they’d still be so close. Lowering her shields, she opened herself to the magic coiled within her soul. A small trickle welled up and flowed across her skin. She directed it into the ground. None of the demons looked in her direction. They were too busy erecting a circle of stones for their spell casting. Or rebuilding one, perhaps? Yes. That looked likely. She’d come to them sooner than they had planned.
Maybe she’d have time to give the sword enough power to return to its master. She dared not let her captors use her blood to remake the sword. Nor could she risk the sword falling into the hands of the Lady of Battles. There was no telling what damage the dark goddess could do with one of her brother’s weapons.
Lillian opened the part of her
soul connected to the Spirit Realm. A cold rush of power filled her. She guided it into the ground, one slow, measured bit at a time. With her head bowed, she looked up through her lashes in the sword’s direction. The massive blade continued to feed.
Fifteen minutes crept by, and the demons still hadn’t noticed her silent rebellion.
This wasn’t so hard, she mused. All she needed to do was give the sword enough power to return home before the demons came to slay her. However, there was one weakness in her plan.
If her own demon soul awoke before she was ready, it might enslave her and the sword, and then return to the Lady of Battles with a grand prize.
She glanced at the stone ring. Unfortunately, demons possessed strength and agility greater than a human, and the ring of stones circling the central altar was nearly complete. Lillian didn’t think her enemies would lavish much time on other preparations once the last stone was in place.
Frosty power filled her body to the point of pain, but still, she held it in check. Long minutes crept by as she gritted her teeth against the burning pressure. When she could hold no more, she released a great flow of magic into the ground. With the crisp smell of winter, cold air rushed away from her in an enlarging circle, caressing the grass and kicking up a delicate scattering of dust as it raced away.
A dire wolf eased out of the trees to the west of her position. He raised his head and sniffed in her direction. Uh-oh, perhaps the demons were nose-dead, but the wolves weren’t. Before she choked off the flow of magic, the dire wolf barked, a high-pitched sound of warning.
At the alarm, Riven rushed from the trees as if the dead forest spat them out. Forty, fifty. Far too many. Instinctively, she pressed her back into the dead tree.
“Stop her!” the demon boy yelled. He was on the opposite side of the meadow, sprinting toward her.
“Oh, what the hell.” She unleashed another wave of magic. The sword drank her power, swallowing it faster than she’d thought possible. Go, she willed it. Go home. Please.
The Complete Gargoyle and Sorceress Boxset (Books 1-9) Page 23