She returned my gaze, her expression conciliatory. “That’s what I haven’t been honest about,” she replied. “It’s been talking with me. We’ve been… I guess you could say, working together.”
“What?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because it didn’t want you to know,” she said, her voice soothing but her words anything but. “It’s got plans for you… I was just facilitating those plans. You’ll understand when you talk to it.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, furious. “How can you stand there and tell me that you’ve been manipulating this whole situation and expect me to trust you? And what the hell do you mean talk to it? And how do you even know this thing, anyway?”
Her smile, at that, was grim.
“I told you you’d soon be touching that tat,” she said. Then she pulled the neck of her shirt down and tipped her head to the side so that the large black bull’s horn gleamed at me.
I blinked, my mind racing. “So this has to do with the Schism?” I asked, remembering she’d connected the Schism and that particular tat when we’d rolled around together in the second cavern.
“Yes,” she said, beckoning me with her free hand to come touch the ink decorating her graceful neck.
I moved forward slowly, and then stretched out a finger to make contact with her dark-stained flesh…
I was so full of rage, and hurt, and a desire to see ourselves freed of those that hated us. I thought of everyone I had lost: my own sister, killed by our own clan because she shared my blood; so many of my friends, picked off one by one when they were weak because the humans feared us; my people, so powerful and yet forced to live as animals by those we had the strength to control, had we but the will…
And so I raised the horn, channeling my power… It ripped through me, the pain agonizing. Yet even more agonizing was feeling what the horn was doing—not strengthening us, as I’d thought it would, but changing us. Its magic warped by time, it created of us what it would, focusing certain powers of each individual until they were utterly different than what they had been. Only I remain untouched… I knew instantly I would never live down what I had done. The oaths I had broken to my people, to our magic…
“Oathbreaker,” I breathed.
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “I’m the one who changed us. I used a power beyond my control because I was like Jarl—I wanted humans to die. For us to rule. And I was punished for my hubris.”
“But what does the creature have to do with this?” I wanted to ask her so many questions, but I was also aware we still had things to do, and that somewhere in the darkness, Phaedra was still waiting.
“It will explain. It wants to talk.”
“That’s what I have to do? Go… talk to it?”
“Yes. It’s already opening up to you, in your dreams. It likes you, in its way.”
“Why?” I asked, totally confused.
She shrugged. “Who knows? But it sees something in you. It’s chosen you.”
I felt my skin grow clammy with fear.
“What the hell do you mean, it’s chosen me?” I demanded.
“It’s always been aware of you, as it slept. It always thought you’d be important. When it woke, it called me to follow you—to recruit you. You would have gotten dragged in eventually, but it saw more in you than just a foot soldier.”
I frowned. “Go on.”
“It’s always wanted you. But when you were attacked—which it had nothing to do with, by the way—it communed with you even more deeply. Became even more certain it wanted you.”
“For what? What the hell would it want me for?”
“The creature has been watching us, Jane. It knows what’s going on. The reason I really followed you is because it told me to, because it wants to take a side. It wants to take our side, and it’s ready to choose a champion. That champion is you.”
I blinked at her. Then I couldn’t help it.
I laughed.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, between slightly hysterical, choked giggles. “You are the champion!”
“It could never be me, babydoll,” she said, sadly. “I’m the cause of all this mess.”
Rather selfishly, I was too focused on my own panic to acknowledge her sadness.
“You do recognize that this is absurd?” I asked, my voice rising shrilly. Panic was setting in, not least because Blondie hadn’t yet cracked a smile. “I’m not a warrior! I’m a selkie! A half-selkie! I’m not a champion!”
“There are many ways to fight, Jane,” the Original intoned, her voice lower than usual, her spine straighter than she normally carried herself. For a second I glimpsed the ancient being behind my neo-punk friend, and I shivered. “And there are many weapons with which to do so. Strength of arms is only one weapon out of many, and oftentimes the first to fall.”
“But why me?” I asked, my voice small and, admittedly, scared.
“We do not choose our destinies,” Blondie said, shrinking back down to become my friend again. Her voice was soothing and her hand gently reached out to rub up and down the top of my arm. “Sometimes they choose us. And you were chosen for great things, Jane.”
“I still don’t understand,” I repeated, trying to wrap my brains around what she was saying. “You were told to come to me? By the creature?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s aware?”
“Yes. Physically, it’s been asleep, but mentally, it’s always been aware and free.”
“And it knows me?”
“Since you were born. This is its home, and you have spent much time dreaming.”
I remembered napping in the sun with Jason, as a child. We were like lapdogs, always snoozing when we had the chance.
Or like seals, I realized, with a sad little smile.
And then there was all that time in the hospital, I remembered, spent dreaming under the influence of prescription drugs.
“But why would it choose me? Are you sure that’s what it said? You weren’t misunderstanding it?” I was practically begging, but at that point, my dignity was my last concern.
“As I said, it likes you. It sees goodness in you, as well as strength. It saw, during its dreaming, the coming storm. And it knew its power was needed. So it woke itself, and instructed me to facilitate your meeting. But that doesn’t mean this is over; you’re still going to have to prove yourself. A champion always has to run a gauntlet, Jane—this is just the beginning of your work for tonight.”
I knew what a gauntlet was—I’d seen a bloated Richard Gere huff and puff his way through one in that horrible movie he did where Sean Connery could have kicked his ass at any minute but had to play the weaker Arthur to Gere’s Lancelot.
“Am I going to have to, like, literally jump through hoops?” I asked, pointing at my nether bits in an attempt to remind Blondie of my new identity as Hips-Got-Stuck.
“What? I doubt it. But you do have to go into that tunnel and face whatever’s waiting. Are you ready?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, wondering whether I would cry. I kinda wanted to, if I were honest.
“Good. I’m gonna release the bubbles. You take out the harpies and the incubus. I’ll take care of that Alfar. Once we’re close to the tunnels, you run like a cheetah.”
I blanched at her suggestions.
Take out the harpies? And Graeme? I was confident I could take out the trash, or a checking account, but Phaedra’s minions?
And she’s on crack if she thinks I can run like a house cat, let alone a cheetah.
“Yep. C’mon,” and with that, I felt a tremendous pull of power as Blondie pulled one of those shining swords of light out of the air in front of her. That said, hers was different—I could see a solid form inside it, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was made of steel or raw power, or a combination of both.
Twirling the sword like a ninja warrior, she hewed the air in front of her. The blade cut through the air with a whistle,
but as we got closer to Phaedra, I realized what else it cut through.
She’s cutting through their shields, I thought, as I watched Phaedra’s eyes widen in panic. Scampering a pace or two behind Blondie, I readied mage balls as we neared our enemies.
The harpies were the first to go. I don’t mean “go” as in “dead” as in “I killed them.” I mean they up and went. Kaya (or Kaori) watched us coming toward her and her wounded sister, and then she did the smartest thing I’ve ever seen either of those two birdbrains do. She gathered Kaori (or Kaya) up in her arms and winged her way through the hole in the cavern ceiling.
Phaedra watched her two minions leave with a look of such rage on her face that I hoped, for the harpies’ sake, Blondie took no mercy on the Alfar. Otherwise, there was bound to be negative-two harpy ladies flying the skies after this evening.
Despite the defection of Kaya and Kaori, I wasn’t feeling any more confident about fighting Graeme. There was something so evil about the incubus. He was a creature made of fear for me, something that haunted my nightmares to this day. Blondie telling me to take him on was like her telling me to go up against the boogeyman.
But she left me no option. We were nearly across the expanse of the cavern, her fiery sword lighting our path toward Phaedra and Graeme. Graeme took up a flanking position on Phaedra, but his eyes were on me. Again, I felt those magical probes of his tickle the edges of my shields, but carefully this time. No doubt uncertain about whether what I’d done last time was fluke or skill, he wasn’t going to forego his most powerful weapon that easily.
Swinging her sword harder as she scythed through Phaedra and Graeme’s ever-increasing shields, Blondie claimed another step toward our enemy, and then another.
Gritting my teeth, I allowed Graeme to make his own inroads. His hesitant mental probe turned into an increasingly more confident touch against my mind. My every reflex screamed at me to smack away his touch, but I held myself steady.
He has to believe he has me, I told myself. You can do this, Jane…
Again I thought of Yeats, using his words to ground me: The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned…
Not gonna let this blood-dimmed tide drown my friends, I thought, bolstering my strength.
Graeme’s mental touch grew bolder yet, as it whispered to me of bodies bound—one in pain to the other’s pleasure—and I allowed myself to react the way I knew he’d like. My eyes grew large, my hands shook… I took an involuntary step back from him, which only made him push harder with that dark mind.
Meanwhile, Blondie had nearly closed with Phaedra. I could feel the Original pulling hard from the charged air around us as she expended a terrific amount of energy cutting through the Alfar’s shields. At the same time, Phaedra was doing everything in her power to keep those shields intact, but they were parting like butter before Blondie’s glowing weapon.
Her eyes undoubtedly as wide as mine, I watched as Phaedra scrambled away from Graeme, pulling her shields with her. Dashing away from us in an undignified little sprint, the Alfar picked the worst place to run. I groaned, inwardly, as she made her away directly toward the one part of the cavern we didn’t want her to see: the part with the little tunnel. Blondie swore, taking off after our favorite nemesis while throwing mage balls by the dozen in an attempt to get Phaedra to turn back around and meet Blondie’s charge.
Graeme, for his part, had dealt with his mistress’s abandonment with aplomb. At first he’d hesitated when she’d run off, as if unsure whether to follow her. I’d like to think he was afraid of taking me alone, but that’s highly unlikely considering how often—and how thoroughly—he’d trounced me in the past.
Meanwhile, I kept tight rein on my expression. I didn’t want to give away the trap, so I didn’t overbait it by doing anything too dramatic, like faking a swoon. But when his next hesitant probe touched my shield I visibly cringed and backed away just the slightest step.
Most likely realizing that the same bad luck that had taken his great protector away had also taken mine, he grew bolder. Smirking, he strode forward, pushing at my mental shields more firmly. I kept up a modicum of the sort of shield I’d formed before, when I’d slammed his down, but I purposefully kept it weak.
The nice thing about Graeme was that he could be counted on for two things: sadism and arrogance. So it wasn’t very surprising when, feeling my vulnerable defenses, he went ahead and slammed into them with everything he had—all that gruesome mojo, filled with the pained screams of his long life’s many victims.
Bracing myself, I allowed my shields to recede before him. But that was the key word: recede. What probably felt like crumbling to him was really just me pulling them in, as close as they would go, until I think they were actually under the surface of my skin.
The important fact, however, was that they still stood. So when Graeme opened his own channels to blast at me with everything he had, I was ready.
Focusing my power into the narrowest stream I could make it, I waited till after Graeme had finished. To him, it felt like he was hitting me full blast. And to me, it felt like he was painting me in nightmares, but none of them got under my skin.
I’d taken a big risk. If he’d figured out what I’d done, he could have walked up to me and simply torn my head off, something I would never have survived no matter how quickly Blondie intervened. But I knew that Graeme got off more on making his victims collude with him on their destruction than he did on the actual destroying. Not that he didn’t enjoy the pain-infliction part, but I knew he really enjoyed the fact that he could make his victims beg him to torture them.
So the only magic he leveled at me was mind magic. And when he was done, it was my turn.
Ramming forward with the thin shafts of power I’d created, imagining an ice pick as I did so, I pushed as fast and hard as I could. I knew I had only moments before Graeme realized what I’d done and he closed off his channels.
So I struck like a serpent, thrusting myself forward, physically, with the strength of my magical push. Graeme’s eyes widened as he felt what I’d done, but he was too late. My power burrowed through his channels, straight past his own defenses, buried as it was in his own mental probes. Quick as one of the incubus’s own leering winks, my power was blasting into his brainpan.
Graeme’s body spasmed, his waxen face grimacing in a rictus of pain. Unlike him, however, I took no pleasure in his obvious torment. But I knew we needed Graeme out of this fight, so I pushed even more power through our connection, despite feeling sullied through contact with his depraved mind.
Luckily, the contact was short-lived, for Graeme quickly crumpled to the ground. He lay on the ground, twitching, his eyes rolled back into his head. Before I could let any pity for that monster filter through my system, I hit him with a mage ball to the head, and another, until he was still.
I wasn’t sure if he was dead, but he was definitely still. And I’d seen way too many movies where the girl goes to check if the bad guy is actually dead and gets her ankle grabbed in return. So instead I hit him with one more mage ball and then wove the water around him tight in a binding spell. I put enough juice in it to last a few hours.
Phaedra, meanwhile, was currently battling with Blondie. The Original had caught up with the Alfar well before the entrance to the tunnel, and they were having a good, old-fashioned bash-off. Blondie’s weapon was that same glowing sword, and Phaedra had created two short swords of her own, but her weapons were purely made of power. Unfortunately, Phaedra’s swords were no use against Blondie’s fierce, real-steel-and-magic version, and they kept dissipating at inopportune moments. Phaedra nearly lost her head, and at least one ear, a few times, although she kept managing to roll away or create another weapon at just the last second.
I had to give it to the bald little Alfar: She was nothing if not a fighter.
“Enjoying the view?” Blondie shouted from where she was bashing at Phaedra.
I didn’t answer, b
ut tried to get closer to the Original.
“Never mind me!” she called. “I’ll keep this one busy. You go on up ahead! Fulfill your destiny!”
I gulped. She made all this sound like an episode of Highlander, what with all the destiny talk. I was someone who had issues, not destinies. I also didn’t really enjoy the whole “go it alone” aspect of today’s activities. I’d been pretty sure that, when I’d taken down Graeme, Blondie would make short work of Phaedra, and we could discover, together, whatever was hidden under Rockabill.
I preferred the buddy system to the “Jane has a destiny” system.
“Go on, Jane! I’ll be right behind you!” Blondie called, just as Phaedra swung at her, hard, with a combo of magic-laser-sword and pure mojo. Blondie oofed as her shields buckled, and she listed to the side.
“Goddammit, Phaedra,” she said, irritably, as she righted herself and her shields. “What part of ‘just give up’ are you not understanding?” And with that, the Alfar and the Original went back to bashing at each other, leaving me to do as Blondie commanded and go off to change both Rockabill’s fate and mine.
Oh fuckerdoodles, I thought, sidling toward the tunnel. Oh fuckerdoodles, I thought again, more emphatically, when I saw Graeme’s still form shift just the slightest bit. I prayed my bindings would hold.
What have I done to deserve this? I thought, as I scrambled toward the tunnel entrance.
All this trouble, when all I ever wanted was to bask on a warm, flat rock.
The tunnel before me was dark as I entered, and darker still as I made my way in. I was just about to light a mage light when the ground dropped out from under me.
The echoes of my screams were all I heard until the next sound: that of my body hitting the floor, hard.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m not sure if I passed out or had the wind knocked out of me or what. But I was definitely out of it for at least a few minutes.
Stretching my limbs slowly, I felt aches but no real pain. Nothing seemed to be broken.
I let myself lie on the cool ground for a moment, gathering my thoughts—and my magic—about me. The atmosphere in these caverns was so damp it felt more like the ocean than it did air, and that went for elemental power, as well. It was like I was lying with my body in the shallows of a beach, everything was so saturated with the sea’s power. So I went ahead and recharged, not taking the power around me for granted.
Eye of the Tempest (Jane True) Page 20