by Darian Smith
Sara watched as Jereth strode into the clearing and up to the circle, his long, loping stride easily covering the distance of two or three of Bridget’s Nan. The old woman wore a sturdy brown woollen dress under a feathered shawl given to her by the local Maori.
“You seem to be gaining respect with the natives of this land,” Jereth commented. “It must be good to have your skills appreciated once more.”
“It is,” said Nan. “But I learn as much from them as they do from me. Our ways are both of the earth but...different.”
Jereth nodded. “Differences can enhance each other when brought together. I’ve discovered this myself during my time with your family.”
Nan shot him a sideways look. “I’ve noticed.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Bridget has spoken to you of our feelings.”
“She has.”
“It is one of the things I will speak with my people about today.” He gestured to the circular pool of water encircled by four saplings and several large, flat stones. “You have my thanks for building this portal. It will mean a great deal to us.”
She nodded. “Step into the water, my lord Jereth. I will open the gap between realms.”
As soon as his ankles sank into the cool water, Jereth knew she had lied. The feel of the portal was wrong. There was no gentle opening that he could step through. The water pulled at him, tugging him deeper like a whirlpool.
He turned. Bridget’s Nan was crouched at the edge of the circle, her hand digging into the earth like claws. Behind her, Bridget’s father stepped out of the trees, an iron poker in his hands.
Jereth tried to step out of the water but his legs were trapped. Magic was holding him, pulling him to the centre of the circle. “Stop this. What are you doing?”
Around the circle, brown skinned women with straw skirts and tattooed faces were emerging, their voices raised in chant.
“We had a deal,” Jereth said.
Nan lifted her head, her eyes black with magic. “And it did not include my granddaughter! Did you truly think we would allow you to wed? Be gone back to your own realm, creature. You will never see Bridget again!”
Sara felt the pain in Jereth’s chest. The agony of loss mixed with the physical tearing of his very being from the human world.
“No! Bridget! I love you! Bridget!” He flung all that he could into a psychic message but the combined force of the women present was too much. The magic doubled back on itself, echoing in his mind.
The door between worlds was closing. He flung himself forward, lashing out with all the power at his disposal. Lightning exploded throughout the clearing, wild, uncontrolled. The circle closed and he was trapped, ever reaching. Ever alone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Sara? Sara? What’s happening?” Nate’s voice was the first thing she heard as the world resolved back into the present. The memory of Jereth’s terror and loneliness left tremors in her body.
“He was so alone,” Sara whispered. “She never pushed him back through to his people. He was fighting too hard to get back to Bridget. That’s what trapped him between worlds with no one. All that time with no one and she kept him there.”
“Nearly two hundred years,” Jereth said. “You kept me in that hell because your family refused to let us marry?”
Bridget sobbed, the ghosts tears tracing translucent streaks in her skin. “I didn’t know,” she said. “They told me you had betrayed us. Your lightning killed my Nan.”
“No.” Jereth shook his head. “She died from over reaching her magic. I refused to give up fighting to come back to you and she refused to stop holding me back. The exertion was too much for her, but she wore me out enough that I couldn’t speak to you when you came. And then it was too late. You believed their lies so easily.”
Sara felt a tug on her sleeve as Nate pulled her to his chest. He rocked her there, letting the warmth of his body sooth the chills of the borrowed memory. She clung to him as the ghost and the fae argued above them.
Slowly, something else came into her awareness.
“Nate,” she whispered. “What’s that smell?”
He kissed her temple before answering in a soft voice, directly into her ear. “Smoke. The house is on fire. We need to get out of here.”
She gasped and shifted in his arms, but he held her tight.
“We can’t move yet. Look.”
She turned and saw what he did. If anything, Jereth’s power had increased while she had experienced his memory. His pain and anger were being channelled into waves of electricity, pulsing around the edges of the room. Webs of lightning covered the door and the window, making escape impossible without certain death. Thick black smoke was seeping in, pooling across the ceiling like molasses sticking to the lid of the jar.
“What about Abi?”
“She’s here.” The little girl huddled next to her father, her eyes wide. “But we need to get out of here or that smoke will suffocate us. Who are these people?”
Sara pressed her lips to his, hard, brief, passionate. She put everything she had into that kiss and let it beg him to trust her. “Get ready to move.”
She stood up.
Bridget and Jereth continued to argue, the lines of electricity pulsed in time with his words.
“Jereth, you need to let us go,” Sara said. “Now.”
He looked at her, his eyes red. “Why?”
She gestured around them at the burning house. “Because we’re trapped here. Just like you were trapped. But we’ll die!”
He turned away. “So?”
Bridget met Sara’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. She laid a hand on Jereth’s arm. “I know that’s not the real you, Jereth,” she said. “You respect life. It’s one of the things I fell in love with.”
He said nothing.
“Please, Jereth.” Sara took a deep breath. “I felt your pain in that memory. I know what it was like for you. But Nate and Abigail had nothing to do with what happened. They’re not O’Neills. And I love them. Please let them go.”
“Look at the child, Jereth,” said Bridget.
He snorted. “A human child. Why should I care about that after what your kind did to me?”
She shook her head. “Not that one. Look closer. At this one.” She pointed at Sara.
The fae frowned, peering at something in Sara’s face. “No. It cannot be.”
“It is,” Bridget said.
Jereth’s eyes widened. “Bridget, my love. You bore me a child!”
“What?” Sara blinked.
Bridget smiled at her. “You’re not my great niece, Sara. You’re my great great grandchild.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sara gaped. “How is that possible?” Everything she knew about Bridget said the woman had died a spinster and never had children of her own. But if she and Jereth had consummated their relationship...could the family have kept something so significant a secret?
“I should like to know that as well.” The electrical display around Jereth dimmed, the web of lightning around the room darkened, but did not vanish. Behind it, a new threat loomed. Flames licked at the edge of the doorframe and the window was a sheet of fire, the outside wall of the house already fully alight.
Nate scooped his daughter up and draped her over his shoulder. “Sara, we can’t wait here. We have to go. Now!”
Jereth held up a hand. “Wait. I will hold back the fire while we hear the answer. Fire is only energy after all and we fae are the masters of energy.”
Nate and Sara exchanged a glance. “I want to know,” Sara said.
He nodded.
Bridget reached out and touched Jereth’s hand. “I was already with child when you were taken from me,” she said. “I had no knowledge of what my family planned to do. I truly believed they would let us be married. When I saw that my Nan had died...” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I didn’t know you were innocent.”
Jereth swallowed. His eyes were shining. “And t
he child?”
“My family wanted to dispose of him, but I wouldn’t let them. In the end, they agreed to raise him as my brother’s child. He married young and the deception was complete. I stayed a spinster and watched over our line until they moved away.” She gestured to Sara. “Until this one returned.”
Tears slid down Jereth’s face. “I have descendants? You know how difficult it is for fae to have children?”
Bridget nodded. “I do, my love. The connection must be one of perfect love and even then, carrying the child is difficult. Our children suffered the same, but they survived.”
Sara felt the tears in her own eyes, though they felt hot with the heat of the flames. She was part fae and the fae had trouble carrying children to term. Her daughter had not abandoned her. She had not left because of guilt or judgement. There was a reason. She was not alone.
She felt Nate’s hand squeeze hers.
The roar of flames and cracking of burning timber grew louder. She took a deep breath and gagged on the smoke in the room. She coughed, her lungs burning like acid.
“Okay, we really need to go,” Nate said. “Whatever you people are, I need to get Sara and Abigail out of here now.”
Jereth touched her shoulder. “Come my child. Let me see you and your family to safety. Bridget has been your guardian long enough. It’s time for me to do my part.”
The lightning cage vanished.
“Thank you,” Sara said. “Great grandfather.”
Nate urged her toward the door. The frame was black and cracked, fire gripped it in tiny, dark orange fingers. Beyond, the hallway walls were well ablaze. Heat washed over Sara as if from an oven. Fear rose in her as she looked down that hall of flame. They’d waited too long to escape. Even as she watched, the banister on the stairs crumbled. Any moment the stairs themselves would follow. There was no way to get through the fire to freedom now.
Then, as she watched, the flames receded, dying down to barely embers. The heat rolled back like a carpet, pulling much of the smoke away with it.
“Hurry,” said Jereth, his voice tense. “I will keep it at bay as long as I can, but the fire is wild already.”
Sara glanced back. The fae’s eyes were narrowed in concentration.
Bridget took his hand. “I will help, my love,” she said.
“Come on,” Nate said. He led the way down the hallway, careful to step between the little patches of flame that were already burning in the floor boards. Sara followed in his footsteps.
Somewhere below, she could hear a crashing sound as some beam gave way and part of the house collapsed. A burst of sparks flooded up the stairwell, pushed by the force of the collapse. She hesitated.
“Come on,” Nate urged her. “You can do it.”
“We have you,” said Jereth.
Together, they hurried down the stairs and the flames in the hallway below died down before them. Each door they passed held a room burning like a furnace, but their path was clear, made safe by Jereth’s power as he followed them through the house.
At last, Sara could see the front door. Their portal to safety and freedom. She breathed a sigh of relief.
A moment later, a wall of flame burst forth, blocking their path. The fire ran along the ceiling at lightning speed, the hallway quickly starting to burn.
“No!”
Sara spun to see what had happened.
Jereth’s back was arched, his body stiff and his face contorted in a silent scream. He twisted, and dissolved, his body splitting into tiny flecks of light that scattered in the wind.
Greg stood behind him, brandishing the hammer. He swung it again and Bridget’s ghost vanished as well, disrupted, as Jereth had been, by the iron in the metal hammer.
“You’re not free to go until I say so,” Greg snarled. “And I say, you can burn, bitch.”
Nate bent over to put Abigail down but, Sara waved him off.
“You know what?” she said. “I can deal with this idiot.”
“You sure?” he said. The flames were growing on the walls again and the heat was rising. There was no clear way out.
Sara smiled. “Yeah. ‘Cause it turns out I’m the descendant of a crazy Irish witch and a pissed off fairy prince. And you know what that means?”
She reached for the power she’d seen and felt Jereth manipulate in his memory. Feeling her way as he had, she pulled it up out of the earth beneath them, out of the sky around them, out of the electrical wiring in the walls, out of the flames that were destroying her home, and out of the portal pool in the bush, now a wide open gateway to the other realm. She held out a hand and it was filled with a crackling ball of power.
“It means my abusive ex is shit out of luck!”
She thrust the power at Greg and it exploded into his chest. His eyes went wide as he was blasted backward, crashing into the burning staircase. A cascade of soot and embers rained down on him.
Sara turned and held out her hand. The flames between her and the front door died. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Moana joined them outside as they watched the house burn. She stood a little way away, leaning on her car, arms folded. Her clothes were muddy and torn but the orange glow of the flames painted the angles of her face and made her appear noble and arcane. She nodded to Sara, a simple gesture of approval and support.
Sara nodded back. She had managed to get them out safely with her newfound powers over energy, but she had been unable to save her home. Nate had used her phone to call the fire department but there was little chance they would arrive in time. He stood now with his arms around Sara, holding her close. Abigail clung to them both.
Sara could feel the warmth of his body sink into her through their torn and sooty clothes. The scent of him was comforting and right.
She couldn’t believe they had argued only that morning. It seemed a lifetime away.
She turned and snuggled her face into his neck. “Thank you,” she said. “For coming to save me.”
His arms gripped her tight. “Thank you,” he said. “For saving Abi and me.”
She chuckled. “Any time.”
He pulled back a little and, for a moment, she was afraid of what she might see in his face. There was nothing but concern. “That thing you can do,” he said. “Does it hurt you?”
She shook her head, smiling. “No. Not at all. But I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do after the portal closes.”
“Is it going to close?” Nate asked. “What about Jereth’s invasion?”
Sara closed her eyes and reached out for her great great grandparents. She could feel them on the other side of the circle, in the other realm. They felt happy. They’d found each other again. They were content. She could feel that other world slowly withdrawing from this one.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem,” she said.
A large chunk of the porch roof collapsed, sending embers flying into the air.
“I’m sorry about your house,” said Nate.
Sara shrugged. “I’ll rebuild. I was starting a new life anyway.”
“I’d like to be part of it,” he said.
A smile crept across her face. “You sure? There’s probably going to be a lot of cats. They’re attracted to magic you know. And apparently I am magic.”
He grinned back and leaned in to kiss her. His lips were firm and warm, and left a tingling sensation where they had touched. She melted against him, sinking into the embrace.
“I always thought you were,” he said.
Author’s Note
Thank you for taking the time to read my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.
Please post a review and let people know about this book! Word of mouth makes a huge difference to an author and is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Kalanon’s Rising
by Darian Smith
An Agents of Kalanon novel.
Solve the murder.
Stop
the war.
Save the world.
Sir Brannon Kesh spent years building a new life as a physician, leaving the name Bloodhawk and the war that spawned it behind. But when the King's cousin is murdered, duty calls him back. The crime scene suggests dark magic and the evidence points to the ambassador of Nilar, an alluring woman with secrets of her own, who sees Bloodhawk as little more than a war criminal.
As bodies pile up and political ramifications escalate, Brannon must join forces with a vain mage, a socially awkward priest, and a corpse animating shaman to solve the murders and prevent another war. But who can he trust when the phases of a bigger plan take shape?
The Risen are the greatest danger Brannon has ever faced. If he and his team cannot stop the killer then all of Kalanon - and the world - will descend into darkness.
Winner of the SpecFicNZ Novel Competition
Get your copy now
About the Author
Darian Smith lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife (who also writes) and their two black cats (who don’t).
By day, he works with people who have neuromuscular conditions such as muscular dystrophy or charcot marie tooth disease. He is also a qualified counsellor/family therapist and can be seen – by those very swift with the pause button – on television shows such as Legend of the Seeker and Spartacus.
For more information about Darian and his upcoming work, please check out his website at www.darian-smith.com.
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