Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series)

by Geoffrey Huntington

“My—father!”

  Rolfe nodded. “You weren’t alone in there, Devon. A good Guardian is never far from your side.”

  Devon had known this. He had felt his father with him, heard his voice.

  “Did you see him, Rolfe? Actually see him?”

  “At first I wasn’t certain, but then I found something that made me positive it was Thaddeus.” He reached into his pocket and handed Devon something. “It was his ring. The one I told you about. The ring with the crystal.”

  Devon held it. A plain golden band, worn smooth where Dad wore it for hundreds of years. On one side there was a small white crystal embedded into the gold. Devon knew the ring contained answers for him, more information about his heritage as a Nightwing. But he was too tired to go there now. He set the ring on his side table, beside Dad’s medal of the owl and the lady, which had made it to hell and back with him.

  Are you proud, Dad? Did I make you proud?

  He didn’t need even the Voice to answer him on that one. Devon knew the truth. He closed his eyes, content at last, and finally allowed sleep to take him away.

  The storm began about three fifteen. And Devon quickly learned the terror was not over. Not yet.

  “Foolish boy,” came the voice in the night. “You will not keep him from becoming master of this house!”

  Devon sat up in bed. Lightning crashed and illuminated the room. He saw a figure dart into the shadows.

  “Who’s there?” Devon asked.

  No answer. Just the howling of the storm outside. Thunder shook the great house.

  Devon swung his legs out of bed. His right thigh still ached, and the painkiller the doctor gave him made his head buzzy. But he managed to put his feet on the floor and stand. He pushed the button to turn the light on beside his bed. The lamp stayed dark.

  Another Misery Point power outage.

  “Great,” he murmured, feeling for the candle and matches. He lit the wick and held the candle in front of him. He saw nothing in his room but shadows.

  He made his way out into the corridor. He was wearing just his flannel pajama top and boxers. The house felt terribly cold, the wind sneaking in between the eaves. Yet that very chill reassured him; surely, if there were demons lurking, he’d feel their heat.

  He paused to look out of the window.

  Yes, just as he expected: a light in the tower.

  I am stronger than you, he told Jackson Muir in his mind. I will banish you once and for all from this house.

  Downstairs the only light was the dancing flame from the jack o’ lantern, casting weird moving shapes against the walls. Devon wondered why the candle hadn’t been extinguished. Or maybe it had been lit again, just to unnerve him?

  Thunder rattled the chandelier in the parlor, sending a tinkling sound echoing through the house. The shapes on the wall writhed and twisted. Devon found the door to the East Wing unlocked, and beyond it, the entrance to the tower wide open—seemingly left that way to beckon him to enter. It had never been so easy before.

  Holding his candle high, he began his climb. At the second landing, the door to the room where he’d seen the light was locked. He tried it but saw his destination was elsewhere. He was quickly distracted by motion still higher up. The door leading to the roof.

  That’s where I saw Jackson the night I arrived, Devon remembered. Standing outside on the top of the tower, looking down at me.

  He resumed his ascent. At the top of the stairs, Devon’s candle was quickly snuffed out by the wind and the rain from the open door. He stepped outside onto the roof. The deep purple sky above roiled as fiercely as the sea below. Sharp lightning sliced through the air down at him, as if drawn to the magnet of this house, to the slight figure of the teenager walking along its roof.

  There is someone else out here, too, he realized.

  Devon could see him now, at the other side of the tower.

  But it was not Jackson Muir.

  Not nearly so tall …

  A flash of lightning revealed the figure’s identity.

  There, in the brief luminescence, was the hideously contorted face of Simon Gooch.

  “Simon!” Devon shouted.

  The gnomish caretaker grimaced. “You were supposed to be his way back,” he rasped. “His way back to reclaim his rightful place!”

  Simon’s hands were outstretched towards Devon. The boy backed up, looking down over the parapet to some twenty feet below.

  “I’ve been waiting so long for his return!” Simon shouted into the wind, his ugly face contorted in rage. “Such power he promised me! I have known many Nightwing, but none so powerful as he!” Simon had reached Devon, staring up into the boy’s eyes. “A mere teenager will not be strong enough to stop him!”

  Devon stood defiant. “I’m no mere teenager, Simon, and I think you’ve known that all along. I’m the one-hundredth generation of Nightwing, and I have stopped the Madman. I have stopped him!”

  Thunder roared across house. The wind buffeted them.

  Simon only grinned. From his pocket he withdrew a small pistol. But it wasn’t the pistol that interested Devon so much as what else fell from his pocket.

  A roll of black electrical tape.

  “It was you,” Devon said. “You fixed the television set so Alexander could watch. You wanted Jackson to get him!”

  “Yes,” he grunted, sticking the barrel of the gun into Devon’s stomach. “It was part of his plan to come back. The boy. You. You were both part of his plan.”

  “You’re crazy,” Devon said.

  Simon grinned again, revealing those eerily perfect teeth in his profoundly imperfect face. “I haven’t been a Guardian for three hundred years not to know my path to true power. Your arrival here was the sign I’d been waiting for. For thirty years I waited.” He grumbled. “You were supposed to be more cooperative.”

  “Sorry to let you down,” Devon quipped.

  “You were the key. What he’s been waiting for ever since they drove the ravens away. The return of the Nightwing to Ravenscliff! You had the power to bring him back—and still do!”

  “Then why did you try to kill me?”

  “Just wanted to overpower you—get you to see who was boss. I wanted to make you do what he wanted. But I’ll kill you now, boy, I swear I will—unless you do what must be done. Bring him back! You can still bring him back!” Simon cocked the gun, ready to pull the trigger.

  “I don’t think so,” Devon said, and instantly the gun became scalding hot. Simon dropped it, screaming out.

  Devon tackled the little man to the ground. But Simon was strong: stronger than was humanly possible, Devon believed. He looked down into the caretaker’s face, and he realized it wasn’t just Simon he was fighting. In the man’s beady little eyes Devon could see Jackson Muir staring back at him.

  “Listen to me, Jackson Muir,” Devon demanded. “I don’t know what connection there is between you and me, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m stronger than you!”

  “No,” the beast within Simon’s body growled. “You are a foolish child!”

  Devon pinned him down by his wrists. “Why am I the key to bring you back? Tell me! Tell me who I am!”

  But Simon roared, sending Devon flying across the tower. Only the stone parapet on the other side kept him from falling off and smashing to the ground three stories below. The little man staggered to his feet and limped over to where Devon lay. The boy looked up at him.

  “Don’t you see?” the voice of Jackson Muir echoed through the sky, as loud as the thunder. “We are the same, you and I! Join me—taste the power I offer you—and we both will live supreme!”

  “No!” came a new voice. “He is not the same as you, Apostate!”

  Devon looked around to find its source. This was not a voice he had ever heard. A woman’s voice. Old and broken, but nonetheless powerful.

  There, in the doorway leading back down the tower steps, stood an old woman, her long gray hair wild in the wind. She wore a long black robe and her bony
fingers pointed accusingly at Simon.

  “You will not have this house! It is not yours!” she commanded, and Devon watched transfixed as a bolt of lightning leapt from her forefinger and crashed into Simon’s chest.

  He screamed, grabbing his heart. He staggered, then fell backward—over the parapet of the tower, screaming long and wild until his horrible impact with the earth silenced him forever.

  Devon stood. He looked down. Simon’s crumpled body lay sprawled on the driveway of Ravenscliff, only a few yards from the front door.

  He spun around. The woman was gone. But there were footsteps coming up the stairs now: Mrs. Crandall, wide-eyed and breathless, emerged from the doorway. She looked at Devon, then over the edge of the tower. She recoiled in horror.

  The rain came down heavier now.

  “He tried to kill me,” Devon said plainly, shivering in his pajama top and boxers.

  Mrs. Crandall just glared at him. Then—in the last move Devon would ever have expected her to make—she reached over and pulled the boy close to her chest. She held him there, tightly, for several long moments, as the rain came down fiercely around them, drenching them both from head to foot.

  The next morning Devon met the woman he believed rescued him.

  “Mrs. Muir,” he said.

  But the old woman in the bed just looked at him with uncomprehending eyes, smacking her toothless gums. She curled her long gray hair around a finger twisted with arthritis, blinking her eyes as she looked at Devon.

  “I told Mama I can’t see any beaus today,” Mrs. Muir told him coquettishly. “How naughty of you to sneak up here.”

  Mrs. Crandall stood behind Devon. “Her mind comes and goes,” she told him. “That’s why I felt it better you not meet her right away.”

  But this morning he’d insisted he meet her, certain that it must have been she who saved him the night before on the tower. What other old woman lived in this house?

  And seeing her now—well, he was quite certain it was the same woman. It had to be. The same long gray hair, the same bony hands—but how frail this woman was. How … confused …

  “Mother hasn’t been out of bed in weeks, Devon—and it’s been years since she’s left her rooms.” Mrs. Crandall smiled at Devon’s befuddlement. “There’s certainly no way she could have ever climbed those tower stairs.”

  “It was her,” Devon insisted. “It had to be.”

  Mrs. Crandall just smiled again.

  He thought of something. “I’ve seen her there in the tower before, too.” Devon looked from Mrs. Crandall back at the old woman, who now crooned some old ditty softly to herself. “One night she called me—by name—from the tower window.”

  “Those tower rooms are locked, Devon. Mother doesn’t have a key. And even if she had been able to manage the stairs, and manage to find her way into a room—she didn’t know your name. She didn’t know you were even in this house.” She looked over at her mother sadly. “Still doesn’t, I’m afraid.”

  “Who are you?” the old woman asked her daughter, her rheumy eyes trying to focus. “Are you the new maid?”

  “Mother, I’m Amanda. Now just close your eyes. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Goodbye, my beau,” she called out to Devon, waving her gnarled, veined hand. “Next time I’ll wear my prettiest pinafore! You’ll see!”

  Cecily confirmed that her grandmother did indeed slip in and out of rationality, and that it was highly unlikely she could have made it up those tower steps. She also couldn’t imagine that it was she who called to Devon that night. Cecily insisted it had to be the ghost of Emily Muir.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Devon admitted. The Voice wasn’t cooperating in telling him anything.

  They were sitting in the parlor, waiting for Mrs. Crandall. She’d allowed both of them to take the day off from school, given everything that happened last night. Devon hadn’t slept after the episode with Simon on the tower. He’d waited with Mrs. Crandall as she called the police. Soon the grounds had been swarming with cops. Both Devon and Mrs. Crandall swore that they’d heard a scream and, upon investigation, found Simon dead, an apparent accidental fall. Or a suicide?

  Deputy Potts had looked suspiciously at Devon’s wounded leg. “How’d you get that?” he asked.

  “You can check with Doc Lamb,” Devon told him. “Wild dog. Better track it down.”

  In the end, the cops were convinced that Simon’s death was an accident. Of course, they’d have to do a full inquiry. Mrs. Crandall understood fully, and promised complete cooperation. Then Devon had watched solemnly as Simon’s broken body was loaded into the ambulance and taken away.

  After that, Mrs. Crandall had refused to speak more until the morning. Now, after seeming to have disproven Devon’s contention about the old woman’s identity, she told Devon and Cecily to wait for her in the parlor.

  “I can’t stop thinking about that poor kid Frankie,” Devon said. “He’s my brother. And he’s still trapped in there.”

  Cecily shuddered. “You tried to help him, Devon. You said he wouldn’t go with you.”

  Devon looked at her fiercely. “Someday, Cecily, I promise I’m going to get him out. I’m going to save him.” He sighed. “I just need to know more about what I’m doing.”

  “Look, Devon,” Cecily said. “Mother has promised to finally tell us everything. All our questions will be answered.”

  He doubted that.

  Mrs. Crandall arrived as composed as ever, and just as guarded. Still, Devon knew there were certain things she could no longer deny. He watched as she settled into her chair in front of the fire.

  “Well, it’s over now, and we can all breathe a long sigh of relief,” Mrs. Crandall said.

  “Did you have any idea that Simon was working in league with Jackson Muir?” Devon asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, and I blame myself for that. I look back now over the years and see how fascinated Simon was with our family history. I should have suspected. But he had been a trusted family servant for so long, I didn’t allow myself to question him.”

  “He said he was a Guardian.”

  This time she nodded. “He had worked with many of the Nightwing before coming to Ravenscliff. But you see, Devon, when he came here, he professed a desire to leave that world behind. We had repudiated our past involvement in sorcery ourselves, so he seemed ideal to work for us. Unfortunately, he harbored other plans.”

  Devon leaned forward. “How did you repudiate sorcery? Isn’t it in your blood?”

  She closed her eyes. “Rolfe told you of the horrible events that happened here in the past. How my father was killed. After that, spells were cast that ended our sorcery, divorced us from our Nightwing past, and took the sheen of magic off Ravenscliff.”

  “That’s when the ravens disappeared,” Devon said.

  She nodded, opening her eyes. “After my father was killed, after the little boy Frankie was lost—those of us who were left determined our family would never again find ourselves at the mercy of Jackson Muir.”

  “But Jackson returned,” Cecily said. “Mother, you always said the ghosts in this house would never harm us. But Jackson tried to kill Alexander.”

  Mrs. Crandall didn’t look at her. She kept her gaze fixed on Devon. “That’s because you arrived, Devon.”

  “Me?”

  “Jackson sensed that you were Nightwing. He determined you would be the conduit by which he returned to power. Your arrival here stirred back to life whatever mystical forces remain here. Your very presence counteracted the spells that had repudiated our sorcery.”

  She stood up and approached him.

  “We are all very grateful to you for saving Alexander. It was a courageous and noble deed.” She paused. “But the fact remains, Devon, that if you had not been practicing sorcery in the first place, Jackson would never have been able to return. You are responsible for the mystical disruptions that happened in this house.”

  “But he had to use his power
s, Mother!” Cecily cried. “There were things—demons—coming at him! And at me!”

  “Be that as it may,” Mrs. Crandall said, still looking down at Devon, “they are gone now, and all practice of sorcery must cease. Do you understand, Devon?”

  “I … I’m not sure I can promise that, Mrs. Crandall.”

  Her eyes flashed anger. “How can you say that? Would you risk bringing danger once again to this family?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t want that,” Devon told her. He seemed to think of something. “Mrs. Crandall, have you really surrendered all your powers? I mean, with a threat as great as Jackson, did you maybe keep just a few?”

  She stiffened. “I told you. Sorcery and magic were repudiated here.”

  “Yeah, but I still remember what you said about redoubling your efforts to protect us from Jackson. What did you mean by that?”

  She sniffed. “Simply that I would make sure no one got into the East Wing again.”

  Devon wasn’t buying it. “All I know, Mrs. Crandall, is that my father brought me up to respect my abilities. He promised that some day I would understand them.”

  She was rigid, unmoving. “If your father had wanted you to practice and develop your powers, why did he never tell you about the long tradition of the Nightwing? Why did he never share with you the secrets of the Guardians? Why did he never train you in the use of your powers?”

  She raised herself to her full height, as she was so prone to do whenever she attempted to intimidate Devon. She glared down at him.

  “Thaddeus Underwood was a great Guardian,” Mrs. Crandall said, “one of the most respected in all the world. Why then did he become just plain Ted March, raising his son to be just an ordinary boy?”

  Devon stood up straight himself, raising his face to look at her directly. He figured in another few months, he’d be as tall as she was, and then he’d grow even taller. Her intimidations no longer worked on him.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Crandall,” Devon said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  She backed down, a little.

  “All I know, Devon, is that for whatever reason Thaddeus adopted you, he chose to raise you without knowledge of your heritage. He did not want you to be part of the Order of the Nightwing.”