Ronan cried out, a vicious, agonizing sound. He stumbled into the stones and struggled to stand. His pain and anguish burned my soul to ashes.
“We have to stop him,” I cried, my heart in my throat. “It’s not working. It’ll kill him.”
Adam’s arms had already dropped away, the safety of his embrace having lost to the lure of the magic. “Go,” he said softly and prodded my butt.
I lurched forward, propelled by my own feet and the intense, mysterious force compelling me. A tidal wave of realization crashed into me. I muscled against the compulsion, turned and held out my hand. “You’re the missing color, the other half of his soul.”
He shook his head slowly. “Not half, a third.” Wistfulness hung heavy in his tone, but he thrust forward and took my hand.
In that moment, as we stumbled to the stone circle, toward Ronan, I knew without a doubt how inextricably linked the three of us were. Our auras had blended as one from the first moment we all stood in Adam’s driveway surrounded by the forest. Seeing the three halos of aural color above the stone circle, I knew it for real.
Chapter 20
The hum of glorious power in the center of the stones encapsulated my world, pulsing in tune with my heart. Its jagged lure quivered over me, magnificent and devastating at once. Fierce adrenaline pumped into my cells that had never seen the sort. Hungry, grungy desire spiraled against my pure magic, trying to drill through it with its ancient taint, its ancient wonder. I fought it from conquering me completely with every ounce of physical and magical strength I possessed.
Magic choked the clearing, throbbing with a need for release, invisible walls pressing on me from all sides. The immense energy challenged me, dared me to take it. Double dared me to give it everything I had to give. A force of evil languished within the foreign power and I struggled against its magnetism. Earth and the Void seemed to fight for their right to open or close the Rift…or to possess me. Earth pushed back, whereas the Void flooded the glade with crackling, caustic magic.
Ronan’s failing magic continued to damage the Rift, adding to the taint surrounding us. He lacked the two vital ingredients that made him whole as a descendant of a Forbidden Thirteen—Adam, and in many respects, me. We made up the triad that could undo the damage and release the pure magic. Only the three of us could open the Rift, I knew that then. Ronan and I couldn’t do it alone. He needed his doppelgänger. Had the Forbidden Thirteen known about this connection? Was this the cost they’d paid to trick the world?
I knew I was meant to do this, to be there, to re-activate this bygone world into the here and now. The urge flooded me, set my feet in motion. A cry escaped me, both terrified and excited. I hoped it wasn’t too late to reverse the flawed closing spell. I bolted into the stone ring, startling Ronan. A ghostly light surrounded him, bounced off the stone pillars. Deliberately, I knocked my hip against him, shoving him away from the star he’d made on the ground. Drops of blood from his nicked finger missed the twelfth point. Adam curled his hand around Ronan’s fingers, halting the blood from dripping onto the ground.
Awed, I spun in a circle and soaked up the glorious energy, fought the corrupt magic with everything in me. The magic in the Realm of the Void sought liberation, and it wouldn’t allow the world to ignore it any longer. Why did we think we could lock the enchantment away again when it had tasted life after centuries of incarceration? How could Adam forego the untold power that promised to be his once cleansed and free? What price to the world would this freedom cost? Was there life in the Void, if it truly existed? Would we all live to see tomorrow?
Adam and Ronan tussled as Adam tried to get a dazed Ronan to understand what was happening. They ignored the urgency in the magic cloaking us until our intermingled auras seemed to knock sense into Ronan. Adam’s minty aura joined Ronan’s ring of blue, completing the circle. The ebony wedge in Ronan’s aura disappeared. Three sundered auras gyrated wildly above us. The scent of heaven sprinkled the three rings, showering us with the intoxicating perfume of spring blossoms, summer flowers, autumn spices, and winter’s holly.
A howling wind emerged in the circle, blowing the dried herbs away on a dazzling emerald current. Standing aside, I waved my arms to rush the wind and herbs along their journey. My presence tamed the air saturated with latent energy in its epicenter. My hair whipped about my head, snapping in the magic drenching us. The wind whispered between the stones in noisy voices discernible in sound, but indistinct in words. Without a doubt, I knew the voices belonged to ages of oppressed fae and sorcerers, the last known magical beings to walk our earth before the Abolishment.
Oddest of all, an ancient encyclopedia filled my head, waiting for me to decipher the knowledge it contained.
I plucked out the green-labeled plastic bag I’d hidden in my pocket earlier. Soft illumination lit Adam and Ronan’s rapt faces, their bodies quaking in tandem with mine from the deluge of crackling magic. They followed my movements as though obeying my silent commands. Careful not to trample the center where I layered the herbs, they rebuilt the twelve points of the star.
I handed each a lancet, and one at a time, we dripped crimson life on the twelve points. After each drop of blood, fire flared, ending in a glittery cloud that ringed the perimeter of the stone circle. This time the magic held in the air around us. Unable to contain my joy, I laughed and shouted my triumph.
Holding back on the final point, I positioned myself in the center and raised my arms toward heaven. The Rift’s energy anchored me to the spot, not that I wanted to move from the burgeoning heaven inside the stones. The aura halos spun above our heads, colors combining into a rainbow of mint, ice blue, and mauve. I’d never seen auras in living color!
As I lowered my arms, I brought my hands together. Contained in my cupped palms, the halos fused into a glowing ball of multihued moonlight. I became the thirteenth point, rooted to the earth. Centuries of magic centered me—heady power undulating in my core, streaming sweet pleasure through my blood, pumping excitement and relief into my heart—until the foreign magic consumed me. My telekinetic receptors invited in all the sorcery and fae magic streaming through the Rift.
Ronan closed the distance and covered my right hand with his left. Adam did the same with my left hand. We stood as one body, so close that the others felt the slightest breath taken by another. After a few seconds, our hearts beat as one.
All my senses blossomed with new life, and I drank in the magic’s exhilarating sweetness, inhaled the unsullied air. Vitality usurped every fiber of my being, leaving me quivering as if I’d been reborn, the magic scrubbing clean twenty-one years of living. Melting sunlight and honey slicked my tongue, sweeter and smoother than the finest Belgian chocolate in the universe. I breathed in the intoxicating mixture of warm sunrises, hot afternoons, and cooling sunsets. Exaggerated sounds of grass growing, trees budding, and clouds gathering bombarded my head. An amazing sense of the earth’s wholeness flooded me.
My hormones zoomed into a free-fall. For once, my head handed them the keys to the castle. Unutterably lost within the energy swamping me, my heart burst with love. Desire spiraled through me, rippling under my skin. It set off a craving for Ronan, for Adam, for the whole of their beings. For the completion of Adam’s transformation to his fae-doppelgänger nature, for Ronan and me with the pure blood of ancient sorcerers coursing in our veins, and for the two of them, complete as one. What would become of our amazing triad when all was said and done? My rapture nudged that vague sliver of doubt to the wayside.
The Void’s urgency crested in need, shooting gentle sparks into my core. “Ready?”
Brilliant silver flecks glistened in Ronan’s eyes. He held his hand toward me, his lips thinning in anguish. The glowing ball of moonlight bounced to my left hand. I squeezed a drop of Ronan’s blood onto the globe. It sizzled and a corona of energy radiated above our heads. My skin tingled as much from the ball as from Ronan’s touch.
Adam grinned and I sensed his eagerness. His livewire hair d
anced in the electrified air, waiting for an infusion of life. I took his hand and squeezed his blood onto the sphere, layering it on top of Ronan’s sizzling drop, the heat of his body coursing down the length of mine. The ball expanded, radiating pure brilliance, raw earthen and ether magic. I nodded at Ronan. He squeezed my finger for the final drop of the one life.
The luminescent globe exploded around us, blinding, blazing. Hands clasped, we formed a circle. Streamers of moonlit magic bathed the stone enclosure. I wanted to rip off my clothes and let the magic wash over my bare skin. I longed to tear off Ronan’s clothes and finish what we’d started in the hotel. I yearned to comb my fingers through Adam’s reformed hair, and gaze upon his newborn honeyed skin.
The sphere melded above us into another orb of light and power. It plunged into the middle of the star we’d made, exploding outward, blanketing us with magic. It bristled across my skin, rearranged me at the cellular level. Exquisite, energizing, strange magic replaced the old sluggish magic I’d known all my life. The final particles dispersed on a gentle balmy breeze. Ronan’s power joined Adam’s pure magic and tangoed evocatively with mine. Their exquisite magic became a part of me, providing me with hope that they’d always be a part of my life, in one form or another.
My tattoo sizzled like hot coals under my skin, expanding outward over my left kidney area. I longed for Ronan’s cooling fingers and soothing lips to doctor it.
Pure magic poured into the clearing. We’d done it. We’d opened the Rift! We lived to shout it to the world. Okay, maybe we’d rethink shouting it to the world until we ensured we didn’t wind up in an impenetrable dungeon.
Everything that’d happened in my life took me a step closer to the person I was meant to be. But as the sun had risen each day, I still hadn’t known what I was, who I was. Then Ronan barged into my condo, and I had instinctively known he’d been missing from my life. This is my place. He is my place.
Adam glimmered with reinvigorated life, and his solid body took on a healthy coloring almost as tan as Ronan. An exhilarating mix of exhaustion and adrenaline melted my legs. Ronan caught me in his arms, and we clung to one another, lips pressed together hard in a fleeting kiss that ended way too soon. Not wanting Adam left out of our celebration, I reached for him, so fiercely longing to touch him in his renewed form.
But Adam had vanished.
“What the what?” Had the Void taken him? Panicked, I lifted my cheek off Ronan’s chest to search for Adam only to find the shadowed outline of a trio of men behind Ronan. An air of menace radiated off them, sullying the beauty we had brought forth.
“Well done, son. You’ve unearthed the Forbidden Thirteen master.” The unmistakable voice with a slight Irish brogue slivered terror through my heart. “And you’ve finally opened the Rift as I’ve wanted for so long. Kudos to both of you.”
Shocked, I froze in Ronan’s arms, searched his face in the dwindling light, but he veiled his features well, even to my expert eyes. Ronan dropped his arms and swung around.
A muffled shot cracked the night air, then a second and a third. The sharp bite of three darts hit my shoulder, stomach, and my right thigh. Power bombed my feet, leaving me an empty vessel of ordinary. Sounds of more shots filtered into my fuzzy mind sliding toward a hollow of nothingness. My weightless body tumbled to the ground in a heap of limbs and darkness.
Chapter 21
My eyes battled the glue clamping them shut. Furious blinking attempted to clear the grit. I rubbed my fingers against my eyelids, and a prick of pain shot into the right side of my neck, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut again. Soft breathing and a scuffle of shoes by my side encouraged my groggy brain cells to awaken. I blinked away my epic joy.
“Ronan? Thank god you’re okay. Hey, what are you doing?” My hazy gaze landed on the nasty gun-like syringe in his familiar fingers…fingers I wanted holding mine, assuring me I was still kicking it. I ached from my desire to touch him to ensure he was okay. Aside from his previous bodily injuries, he looked absolutely perfect.
Hello, reality of mine. Hadn’t his father shot him full of bio holes? Why wasn’t he laid up? “Get that piece of Riley Senior crap away from me.”
“It’s a tracker. Don’t fight it. Don’t try to run either,” he commanded in a voice gruffer than his usual McGrumpy self.
“Don’t do this to me.” My heart cricked. Weird wetness loosened the stickiness in my eyelids. I sure as hell wasn’t leaking tears. Was I bleeding? “Ronan? What’s going on?”
Absent a sound, Ronan ghosted and floated away on a soft white cloud. Maybe I was dreaming. No way would Ronan hurt me nor do his father’s bidding of the illegal kind. Nope. No how. Just a nightmare.
My brain flirted with unconsciousness again, and I let it sweep me away on a storm cloud scuttling after Ronan and his fluffy white vehicle of confusion.
“Wake up that bleach blonde head of yours.” A familiar raspy voice found a landing in my woozy mind.
Relief coursed the length of my leaden body stretched out on a plank-firm bed. “Zoe?” Fuzz coated my tongue and I had a horrible time dredging up moisture.
“About time you returned to the living.”
Zoe’s face swam above mine. An excavation crew seemed to dig in my skull for long lost brain cells. I squeezed my eyes shut against the brilliant ceiling lights and dragged the covers over my head. Thank lucky thirteen! She was alive. The last two days were all a fat, hairy nightmare.
Tossing gold bullion into a wishing well probably wouldn’t wish away my delusions.
I thrust out my right hand from beneath the covers, feeling the bands cuffing my wrists. My blood pressure headed for DEFCON-10. Time to dial up and deal. Mustering lubrication in my throat, I spewed forth a torrent. “Tell me I just got back from my date with your brain-dead cousin, and you’re here to dish the dirt. Cody and Cleo are slumped on my ankles after eating ten pounds of food, right?” I really wished it’d all been my worst nightmare.
Zoe pinched my arm. “Right. Here, kitties, come give Mommy a reality check.” She tugged the covers off my face. “Did bleach frazzle your brains?”
“I don’t bleach my hair.” I made an attempt at outrage until tears skimmed down my cheeks, wetting the low thread count pillowcases. I think the bright lights caused my eyes to water. Seriously.
“Who are you and where’s the real Aria?” Zoe’s relieved voice shook me to my core. “Aria Elle Walker never cries.”
“Shut up and hug me.” Zoe climbed onto the bed and we hugged one of our nine lives out of each other. “I’m sorry to get you involved.” I inhaled her cheap melon hairspray. “I’ll get you out of this watermelon hell and back to your beauty salon lifestyle.”
“I may have to shave my head to get rid of the drugstore smell.” She sniffed.
Unflattering sky-blue fleece sweats covered her voluptuous body. You wouldn’t normally catch her dead wearing fleece. Velour was more her style if forced to wear athletic clothes. And she detested blue. “Why did they let you in here with me?”
“You’ve been out of it since yesterday. The shit-for-brains were worried.”
I glanced at my watch. Shock bulged out my eyes. Monday afternoon, and I scarcely felt as if I’d slept two winks. Fingering her jacket’s hem, I grinned at her, barely able to contain my joy at finding her alive and well. “What’s up with this? Slumming?”
“I could say the same about you, Blondie.” Zoe flicked the covers off me, exposing an identical sweat suit in pink.
I smiled to conceal my terror. “At least they got the colors right,” I teased, plucking at my sleeves to expose a deadener on each wrist. Pink was my color. My hair felt weird, heavy on my head. Locks fanned my shoulders, reaching lower than I’d ever seen it. Was I delusional?
Irritation darkened Zoe’s smattering of freckles. “What’s going on? Why does a paranormal research group who makes frickin’ deadeners for the government want you so bad? Who wants you dead? Who’s that hot piece of ass Ronan who carried you in?”
She sank into the black vinyl and chrome bedside chair and leaned forward.
My eyebrows shot toward my hairline. I tried to sit up, but straps held my torso and ankles to the bed. “He carried me in?” I thought Riley had shot Ronan with the same triple dose of bio-poisons he’d shot into me. Had Ronan escaped the extra dose? Wariness centered heavy in my chest like an old wound that ached on a rainy day, which was every day in Seattle. The nightmare returned, and I fingered my neck, searching for the injection site. Nothing, not a stitch of pain. Had I dreamed him?
“Shoulder-length black hair, hot rugged looks—except for the freaky blank stare and frowny grimace. Muscles to die for. Held you like you were the last female on planet Earth.”
The last female on Earth observation mitigated the edge of mistrust and anger creeping up my chest. Things still didn’t play right in this bully versus innocent blonde girl playground fight.
A bang in the hallway sent us lurching in our cheap sweats. We exchanged nervous glances. Beeps dinged before the door slid inward. A stocky security guard sporting a Dominion Research logo on the chest pocket of his navy uniform, carried in a tray loaded with covered dishes. He had a bio-energy dart gun, a handgun, and a smartphone clipped to his utility belt. An earpiece stuck out of his right ear.
How’d they know I was awake and starving on the morgue’s doorstep? A cursory glance of the blue and gray room revealed a camera eye in the flat panel display across the room. Sneaky bastards.
Security dude set the tray on a wheeled table near the door. Zoe jumped up to investigate, swiping the covers off.
“Idiots. Aria doesn’t eat ice cream.” She shoved a bowl at Buzz-Cut. “On second thought, I’m still hungry.” Snatching her hand back, she cupped the bowl in her palm.
Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection Page 169