Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy)

by Gwen Mitchell

  Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the security of Kean’s wards ever again. At least, not until the demon was firmly rooted in her past and only her past.

  Her father swayed close as they approached the entryway. His hand hovered over the side of her face, and her breath caught. He settled it on her shoulder instead, and when she didn’t shy away, he half-embraced her and dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “Do not worry, daughter mine. All will be put right soon.”

  Bri gave him a wan smile as he pulled on his coat. The wards sizzled with electric blue as he stepped through. He turned on the small porch, an almost whimsical look on his face as he took a backwards step into the pouring rain. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Geri hadn’t read for herself in years, but the cards were calling to her. She should have turned to them much sooner. Of course, knowing what she did now, she would have done many things differently. Wasn’t that the kicker? A seer of the future, regretting the past.

  She would have prepared Briana better, for one thing. The poor child had already lost so much. How would she make it through this test of fire with no one to guide her?

  The Hanged Man emerged for the third time. Insight. A transition in how one sees the world. She arched one brow. That was no news. Briana’s Inner Eye had opened. She now lived in a totally new world. An inverted world, like that of the fool dangling from the tree. A world she didn’t have a bloody clue how to survive in.

  Also for the third time, Death on the Horizon.

  Well.

  Geri shuffled the cards aside and lit her first cigarette in almost twenty years. She took several gentle puffs, followed by one long drag, which she exhaled in a series of concentric rings. She laughed suddenly, catching herself by surprise. Her heart kept skipping along after the laughter died. She poured another dram of whiskey and tossed it back.

  She’d done many stupid things in her life. Made plenty of mistakes. Done plenty of good, too. She liked to think she’d done more good than harm, that she’d wrought good Karma. She’d never been a mother, but she’d brought countless babes into this world, and loved a few like they were her own. She’d witnessed wondrous miracles, and seen some of the darkest times of others’ lives. In all those long years, she never imagined herself like this.

  A crone of seventy-eight, sitting alone at her kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, waiting for death to come knocking.

  Thunder growled outside, and Geri stubbed out her cig.

  The lights flickered and went out. Lightning clashed in the distance, revealing the outline of a man darkening her doorway. She eased from her seat.

  He didn’t knock, but the kitchen door creaked as it swung open. The wind outside howled lightly, like the hooting of an owl.

  Geri stepped into her salt and rose quartz protection circle. The candles she’d arranged earlier jumped to life as she crossed the threshold. Even the unnatural wind couldn’t blow them out.

  The black-clad figure melted into the darkest corner of the room. A cloak of shadows clung to him, climbing to his shoulders from the floor and cascading off the other side.

  The door slammed shut, rattling the windows in their frames. Her antique dining set flew across the room and crammed itself into a pile of kindling, blocking the exit. The wood splintered and snapped.

  She gripped her blackstone amulet and spoke to the darkness. “I knew you would come.”

  She’d known as soon as she felt the power of the mirror and tied her destiny to it. One’s destiny does not go untouched by a relic of the Legacy.

  “Then you also know you will not survive this.” His casual tone didn’t match the menacing hiss of his voice — like someone strangling.

  “There are many lives ahead of me, Dark One.” The demon could take this one. But he could only break her will if she allowed him. She would not breach Briana’s trust. She began running through a mental list of defensive spells, trying to weave as many together as time allowed. Hold the line, and do her best to protect Cecelia’s last baby. At this point, that was all she could do.

  The demon stepped into the gauzy beam of semi-light cast through the windows. His shoulders were slumped, and his arms dangled at his side unevenly. His stride had an unnatural rolling gait, which reminded Geri of a marionette. In the same manner, his jaw hung loosely, as if broken off the hinge. Flaky grey skin stretched like taffy over blade-sharp cheekbones. Red glowing slits fixed on her from pitted eye sockets.

  Her blood went cold and then flashed boiling hot.

  He grinned, a grotesque stretching of flesh displaying scissoring fangs. Her Second Sight revealed the shadow of spread wings, horns spiraling, his tail a whip of smoke lashing behind. His head tilted at an odd angle. “Give me what I want, Seer, and your death will be quick. Resist, and you will watch me dance in your blood.”

  He lifted a hand, spread spidery bone-white fingers, and clawed across her protective ward. The perforation let in a draft of cold so abysmal that Geri’s heart stopped for a moment. She choked on her next breath, a banishment curse dangling on her tongue.

  The demon thrust both hands into her ward and tore open a bigger hole.

  She had not left herself any room to back up. If she touched the edge, the circle would fall. She dropped to her knees, just as his arm swept inside, grasping for her neck.

  “Witch! Give me what I want! Where is the mirror?” he snarled, then hacked and sputtered.

  Geri knelt on the kitchen floor with her forehead pressed to her amulet. Her nightgown spread around her in a pool of soft white cotton. She whispered every disbursement and shielding and binding spell she’d ever heard, visualizing the latticework of magic funneling into the blackstone in her hands.

  The demon laughed — a snickering wheeze. He sliced vertical slashes along her shields with his claws, and kept going when he reached the bottom, leaving singed scratch marks in the oak floor.

  Geri kept her focus on the work at hand, putting all of her energy into the spell. The candles of her circle guttered. The demon knelt beside her on the floor for a moment, and though she quivered from the strength of his aura, she blocked him out. She held the line.

  His claws clacked on the floor to either side of her head, and he made a sniffing sound by her right ear. Puddles of saliva formed in front of her. She pressed her eyes closed and concentrated.

  Another long inhalation. “Your terror is spiced with such determination. I think I will enjoy this.”

  He grabbed her by the hair and threw her against the china buffet on the far wall. Glass and dishes crashed to the floor after her. Cuts all over her body opened and bled, pouring forth precious life magic. She clenched a slick palm around her amulet and gritted her teeth against the pain that came with her next breath. Several of her ribs were broken.

  “You know you’re not strong enough, Geraldine. You’ve always been unimpressive. A disappointment since the day you were born.”

  Geri shook her head and set her will against the power in his oily words. But that very weakness screamed louder through her nervous system as her body convulsed with pain. A manacle of doubt took hold. Tears built in her eyes. Still she clutched the talisman harder, as if lives depended on it. Because they did. Not just hers, but many.

  Her mother’s voice, which she hadn’t heard in thirty years, filled the room. “It’s just that your father so wanted a son, and ye were his last chance.”

  Some rational part of Geri knew this was the demon’s game — to weaken her resolve and make her easier to manipulate. But rationale can only take so much of the bite out of the scars we wear on our hearts. She’d always felt lesser, knowing that she wasn’t what she was supposed to be. Acknowledging the grief knotting her stomach, Geri still fortified her will to endure.

  She would prove her worth this time. “Ye can poke me and watch me slowly bleed, demon. But I’ll still die before I give you anything. And when I’m through, ye’ll be bound from harming that child!”

>   She groaned as she rolled to her side, grinding glass with her elbow. She bent over the amulet, and took up the tendrils of her incantation again.

  Glass crunched underfoot as he lifted her by her hair and the back of her nightgown. Like a kitten caught by the scruff, Geri tucked into a ball, wrapped around her last hope of helping Briana. The demon dragged her down the hall and tossed her against the bottom of the stairs, huffing like a boar. With a flick of his wrist, a coil of rope appeared from thin air and tied itself to the upstairs banister.

  Geri heaved into an upright position and spat some of the blood out of her mouth. She’d lost her spectacles, and one eye was swelling shut. Her left arm wouldn’t stop shaking, and with every breath, she was sucking in needles. He would do worse. He was only getting started. But, this time, she would not be broken.

  She withdrew from her physical body enough to open a large tap into the Conduit, and bathed herself in pure, clear energy, washing away the demon’s taint. Power channeled through her, into her spell. The woven magic flared to life in a prismatic wash of colors in her Second Sight, then funneled into the charm clutched hard in her right fist, paints swirling down an invisible drain. Warm light burst from the cracks in her grip.

  Thunder crashed, right overhead, drowning out the demon’s snarl. He lunged at her, tearing with sharp claws. Her right forearm slashed open, and her left shoulder.

  She let the amulet drop against her chest, and looked into the red darts of his eyes. A shroud of darkness cocooned her. A howling funnel of wind tore the front end of her house to pieces. Inside his coil, she was suspended ten feet in the air, totally helpless as the rope slid around her neck, soft as a lover’s caress.

  “It’s not this weak flesh that I feed upon. It is that which transcends that interests me. Your soul. Give up the mirror, and I will let you keep it. Or I can tear it from you a piece at a time.”

  Lightning flashed outside, and the windows lit with crackling red wards. The space inside swirled with a hurricane of Geri’s dearest possessions. The rope choked tighter, and she tried to grip at it with blood-slicked fingers.

  “Tell me where it is, or when I’ve finished with you, she’ll be next.”

  “I do not bargain with the likes of you.” Geri cried out as he flipped her upside down.

  He snapped his fangs in her face. The rope loosened its hold for a moment, and she gurgled in a deep breath, as blood pooled in the back of her throat as she murmured the final incantation.

  “What was that?” the demon growled.

  “I give my life for hers. You will not kill her, Soul Eater. So I have spoken, so let it be done!” Geri grasped her amulet and pressed it against his forehead. Flesh singed and smoked as the magic from her spell sank in with the crudely carved stone.

  The demon wailed and spun away, and the cloud suspending her dematerialized. For a split second she was falling, blinded by the light of her magic as it shone from the charm around her neck. And then, she was no more.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bri ran through a foggy wood as fast as her short, scrawny legs would carry her. She was a little girl, lost and afraid. Running, always running. Someone was giving chase. Someone who wanted to hurt her.

  Every turn led to a dead-end. She couldn’t see the ground, but her feet were mired in something heavy and thick as she struggled onward. Branches clawed at her clothes. Thorns bit into her skin. Still she ran, her breath a harsh pant. The forest narrowed to a path barely wide enough for her to slip through, until she could go no farther. A sharp rock face loomed in front of her. Thick fog rolled in from all directions.

  With a tiny whimper, she began to climb. She cleared the mist after what felt like ages, and ran up a grassy knoll with a single knotted tree at the top. The night was a perfect black, twinkling with stars. The sickle moon dangled so low she could leap from the crest of the hill and grab on to it.

  When she reached the top, she skidded to a halt, heart pounding. One step ahead lay a hundred foot drop to the rocky shoals below. She turned around, but the hill she’d just climbed had vanished. She stood on a narrow outcropping of rock above an endlessly churning grey sea. And then even the sea fell away. The night sky irised around her to become a nebulous cocoon. Lights rushed in all directions, leaving streams of sparkles in her vision. The world inverted. When it righted, she was standing on the cliff again, her adult self, barefoot in her favorite red concert gown, gazing down into the swirling currents.

  To her right lay a path bathed in light. Though light was a poor word for something so blindingly beautiful. Something she could feel as sure as see. Warm and tingling, but soft and nourishing to the soul — pure sunlight coated with every good feeling imaginable.

  It was hard to pull her gaze away from such a sight, but on her other side lay something equally fascinating. A foot from the left of the narrow ledge there was an abrupt drop, as people had imagined the end of the world before they knew it was round. Beyond that…nothing. Utter emptiness. Darkness. An abyss so complete that, if she stared too long, every sense of self could filch away into the cold infinity. She would be truly lost, as if she’d never existed at all.

  Bri turned away and blinked, adjusting to the light again, then nearly fell off the ledge in surprise. Geri was standing beside her silently, dressed in a white cotton nightgown.

  She shook away tears when she saw it was torn and covered in dark stains. “Geri, no.”

  “Briana,” the specter said, staring right through her.

  Briana reached out, but her hand passed through nothing but air. “I’m right here.”

  “Hear me.” Geri was clutching something tied around her neck. “He’ll come for you — the Soul Eater. My amulet will protect you, but do not face him alone.” Her eyes filled with tears as she turned to gaze into the light, then she shielded them, as if from a rising sun. “Briana, hear me.”

  “I hear you, Geri,” Bri choked out.

  The old woman continued down the shallow steps until a swirl of the feather-soft light swallowed her. Bri swiped at the hot tears gathering in her eyes.

  “Skydancer,” another voice whispered over her shoulder.

  She whirled on her heel. The mirage of an indiscernible face floated in the darkness, its expression twisted in agony. A shrill, keening cry exploded in her ears, and the forehead of the mirage burst aflame in a golden flash. The scream and the face faded, but the glowing shape in the darkness morphed into an eagle with wings spread wide. It hovered in the air for a heartbeat, a figure of shining warmth, and then it shot up into the sky like a comet.

  Awe froze her, but then black clouds swirled overhead, swallowing up even the welcoming light. Thunder shook the sky, reverberating in Bri’s bones. Lightning shot down beside her and hit the narrow rock path to her right. The rubble plummeted into the now raging sea. Wicked thorns crept toward her from the darkness on the other side, shifting and crumbling the ledge under her feet. Bri turned in a circle on what remained of her pedestal. The thunder rolled again. She felt the charge of lightning build overhead. It cracked, blinding her.

  She leapt.

  The waves below crashed on the rocks, foam swirled, and she kept falling.

  When Bri landed, it wasn’t in the water, but she still seemed to slam into herself from far above. She was laying on something hard. She ached, but not like she should if she’d broken every bone in her body. She slowly let out the breath she’d been holding for the plunge, and opened her eyes.

  She was back in Astrid’s living room, with Kean stretched out beside her on top of a pile of blankets and cushions spread across the rug. Salty tear-tracks had dried on her cheeks, and her feet were blocks of ice. The fire in the woodstove had died, and outside a storm hammered against the small house. Wind battered at the back screen door and whistled across the wall of thin windows. Lightning flashed in the distance.

  Bri huddled closer to Kean, waiting for thunder that never came. The storm was moving offshore, away from them. Every hair on he
r body stood on end, pulsing with the electric charge sizzling the air. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering as the last clinging tendrils of her vision drained away. Only the most prominent details remained etched in her memory: Geri’s warning and the eagle.

  Kean stirred awake, blinked at her, and mumbled, “What’s wrong?”

  A demon was coming for her — a Soul Eater — with a personal vendetta.

  He sat up and slid an arm across her shoulders. “Bri?”

  Do not face him alone.

  “It’s Geri,” she whispered, bowing her head to rest against her knees. “She’s gone.”

  ***

  He didn’t want to, but Kean believed her. Briana was an Oracle. She said she’d seen Geri cross over, whatever the hell she meant by that. But he believed her, on instinct and principle. Instinct had spurred him to action. With it, he’d roused Astrid from bed, called Gawain, and corralled his coven into his truck in the drizzly pre-dawn. Instinct got him as far as Geri’s driveway. Then emotion slammed into him.

  Geri was dead. It was his fault. And here he was, leading Bri and Astrid right into the hot zone. Damn fool. But what else was he supposed to do?

  “Stay here.” He left the truck running, but locked his door as he slid out. Briana held on to Astrid, who was crying with no signs of stopping.

  Feeling about two inches high, Kean crossed the rain-whipped yard. The sky had lightened at the edges, but the house was dark. The motion-sensing light didn’t come on when he approached. Leaves scurried across the porch as he climbed the steps, and a rustling to his left caught his attention. He paused, his heart dropping like a lead weight into his stomach. Geri’s spelled roses had climbed up the side of the house, even up to the roof and along the gutters. They were all dead. Charred black.