Ula (Born of Shadows Book 1)

by J. R. Erickson

  When she saw the black headlights of Sebastian’s discarded car, she veered towards it, rowing harder. She did not pull onto the shore, but leapt from the boat, planting her feet hard in the sand. The keys still clung to the back bumper, and she accelerated in reverse, whipping the car around and almost losing control.

  "Relax," she commanded herself. She was exhibiting the lack of control that Elda had warned her about.

  The trees whizzed by, the road laid empty, no late night cars.

  She watched road signs, reading them easily, despite driving by at eighty-five mph. She might have missed the exit for Devil’s Bend, but a puff of frigid air blew against her neck and she instantly let off the gas. The exit drew up on her left and she took it slowly.

  Her confidence started to teeter. Sure, she'd left the island and made it here on her own, but what now? What if Vesta was waiting for her in the forest?

  For a split second, she considered turning the car around, racing back to the Coven and waking Elda or just crawling back into bed, but then her mother's voice drifted into her ear. It was not her mother's voice now, but from when Abby was a child. She was singing to Abby, who lay snuggled in her lap, her fingers gently massaging Abby's scalp. "Baby’s boat's a silver moon, sailing o'er the sky, sailing o'er the sea of dew, while the clouds float by…"

  As her mother's voice sang gently in her ear, Abby started to cry. The car had nearly stopped, but Abby didn't care. She stared through her tears and the windshield at the dark night and allowed thoughts of her mother to rain down, but when the guilt at leaving started to ebb in, she resumed her search.

  She pressed the gas and turned right as the dirt trail came up beside her. Tree branches scraped and grabbed at the car. She knew that they were not sinister beasts trying to take hold, but she couldn’t kill the thought. She pulled to a stop on the embankment edge that Devin had showed her.

  The sand and rock sloped down, while the cattails climbed up, both fighting in the opposite direction. Abby hesitated, then slipped off her pants and shoes and dropped over the edge, stumbling and falling down the dune and splashing into the water. It was warm and murky, impossible to see beneath the thick, hairy lily pads and piles of floating brush.

  She stood for a moment, waist deep, hoping that Devin might point her towards the lighter, but nothing happened, no spirit guide or whispered words. Finally, she waded out. Another foot in, the pond sloped steeply down and Abby could no longer touch. She trod water, then dived, opening her eyes. Amazingly, she could see, though her view was no better than smudged goggles.

  Deeper she went, searching the tangles of seaweed and thrusting her hand into the muddy bottom, which suctioned her fingers and threatened to hang on. Her sodden clothes hung below her, and as her air ran out, much slower than usual, she pushed back to the surface. Gulping another lungful, she dived back below. Near the pond’s center, she spotted Devin's car, the roof and windshield completely submerged in mud, only the body and tires visible through the swampy water.

  Tendrils of slimy weeds swayed lazily on the pond floor and made her think of corpses stuck in the earth. She swam closer to the car, kicking her legs and propelling downward until she could reach out and touch the rubbery tires.

  Around the car she moved, hands scraping up billows of dirt, but no lighter. She could see the cracked leather seats in the Volkswagen and several items floating in the cavity: a bag of potato chips, a headband, a t-shirt gone from white to mud.

  Swimming up for more air, she paddled back near the sand dune edge. This time she remained in the shallow area, standing and shuffling her feet along the slimy bottom. Mud caked between her toes and lodged beneath her toenails. Twice she hit a rock and thought she'd found the lighter. Frustration barged in, followed by defeat. She plopped into the water, mud oozing along her legs, but she didn't care. The water reached her chest and lapped her shirt, creating a distinct line of muck that she didn't bother wiping away.

  Mosquitoes buzzed in her ears, swimming on the humid air that smelled of rotted vegetation, like the compost pile her mother kept by the backdoor. She slapped them away and swore under her breath and couldn’t imagine how she’d gone from a magic castle to a rotting swamp alive with parasites.

  She started to doubt her plan, even to doubt the vision of Devin, but a massive bullfrog drew her eyes. He sat on a gargantuan lily pad, his throat ballooning white and then deflating with a loud call that ricocheted off the forest walls. She stood to look at him closer; she had never seen such a large frog. His long, gummy tongue lashed out and caught a fat mosquito buzzing overhead, bringing it into the soft pink belly of his mouth. His shining glass eyes lowered into the folds of his body, but Abby felt him looking at her and then he leapt, the fat body extending into a long white stripe before disappearing into the water with barely a splash.

  She stared at the tiny ripples of water and then returned her gaze to the pond. The ripples fanned out and when they reached her legs, she felt them. "Ha!" The laugh erupted out of her, sounding like the bullfrog's croak. Her fingers trailed the top of the water, her element, black water bugs skittering by.

  Abby clenched her eyes closed and concentrated. The water hugged her, plastering her shirt to her stomach, dripping in muddy rivulets from strands of her hair. In her mind, hope gave way to the blue ball of energy. It grew larger, vibrating, shaking Abby's body and flowing out into the water. She imagined the water lifting, all in a single unified mass, simply floating above the squishy floor.

  Opening her eyes, but holding steady to her vision, the water began to rise around her. It moved up, washing over her torso, then neck, then head, momentarily submerging her from the waist up. Then it was above her, hanging like a low, wet cloud. Shifting her gaze to the pond bottom, she was greeted with a treasure trove of discards. Her eyes passed over keys, sodden towels, hubcaps, and the skeleton of a Christmas tree.

  The goddess stuck straight up from the mud, her metallic body vibrant against the dark browns and greens, an easily overlooked bit of rubbish in a water-filled junkyard. Abby moved forward and squatted down slowly, her mind concentrating on the wet beast dangling overhead. She clutched the lighter in her fist and rose upward. For a moment, she stared at it in disbelief, not quite ready to celebrate, in case she realized that she was holding a gum wrapper or discarded bottle cap instead. But no, it was the goddess lighter, surprisingly clean in its boggy home.

  Abby let out a loud whoop and felt her tether to the pond snap. It crashed down, not painful, but shocking, and for a terrified moment, she felt the lighter begin to slip in her moist hand. Her body fell forward and she clutched it before it could slither out. She landed roughly on her knees in the muck. Pressing the lighter to her breast, she waded and then ran back to the car, struggling quickly into her pants and shoes.

  She drove from the woods slowly, stopping at the freeway on-ramp. The lighter balanced on the dashboard in front of her, but she didn't know what to do.

  She picked the lighter up and pressed her thumb along the tiny sword that the goddess held; a small blue flame erupted and then flickered out. She did it again; this time the light held and grew steadily. The flame drew her in, and beneath the blue light an image emerged.

  Abby pulled the lighter closer, gazing beyond the flame and seeing out through Vesta's charcoal eyes.

  * * * *

  Vesta stood in a small clearing. The trees on every side of her were dead, their bark black and withering further as she pushed all of her energy at that single goal: death.

  Beside her, Tane let in a rush of breath that nearly broke her concentration. She flicked a thought, a mean one, his way, and he recoiled, as if pricked by something small and lethal.

  The moon overhead was luminous, and Vesta felt the full enormity of her power as she stared at the singed trees, their branches curling into their base, trying to hug the life she’d already extinguished.

  Tane quaked with envy, and now that she had become a full Vepar, she felt the emotion pouring out
from him. It was like a stench, thick and putrid and needling the exposed flesh of her body. Evil thrived on evil, but Tane was not evil. Vesta had made a mistake in offering him as a disciple. But what choice did she have? Tobias had insisted that all new Vepars mentor the next. Those were the rules, and had Tobias not complied, she, too, would not be a Vepar. Though she could have chosen better, darker, and meaner. Tane wanted human power. He wanted money and women. He didn’t want to feel power by feeding on another’s life. She had seen him flinch when she fed at Devin’s death. She knew that Tobias had felt it too.

  “Can I see your ring?” Tane asked meekly, and she glowered at him.

  Her ring. It was a gift from her Aunt Fiona, a Vepar, who’d been disowned by their human family fifty years earlier. Vesta’s parents did not know that Fiona still lived and they preferred it that way. As a girl, Vesta had known Fiona only through photos, family lore.

  “Evil, she was,” Vesta and Tane’s father had told them when they were barely teenagers. “Killed her own kid. Axed him while he slept.”

  Vesta had not believed the tales. She knew that Fiona existed, but doubted there was any truth to the gory legends that accompanied her. Later, she discovered the truth when Fiona visited her at school. She was only fifteen then, but Fiona recognized the black blood within her, waiting to be let out.

  “No, Tane,” she snapped. “Interrupt me again and you will join them.” She jerked her head towards the burned trees.

  Fiona, Vesta learned, had killed her only child, a boy. Not with an axe though, she used a hammer because it happened to be laying nearby.

  “Those were more barbaric times,” Fiona had said, describing her own initiation into the world of Vepars. In those days, it was not enough to kill and consume witch blood. You also had to kill kin, one of your own, to prove that you renounced them and chose the Vepars as your new family.

  Not only had Vesta not murdered her kin, she had chosen her own brother to mentor. He would become a Vepar and join their ranks. She looked at Tane, who squatted on the grass, poking at a black beetle with a stick, like a child.

  She did not speak to him, but strode from the field. In the cave, she breathed deep, preferring the hot, moist air to the cool night. She took a narrow tunnel to the dungeons, stopping outside a heavy black door.

  * * * *

  Abby returned to the car in a painful flash that sent the lighter flying from her hand into the windshield. Her head ached, and she fumbled to put the car in gear, her sweaty hands slipping over the shifter.

  The dungeon door lingered in her mind. It was thick and black and heavy looking. If her parents were in there, would they still be alive? Did Vepars barter for human lives?

  "Abby." The breathy voice startled her.

  The shimmering image of Devin hovered in the passenger seat. Abby glanced at her, then back at the road.

  "My parents," Abby choked. "Are they okay?"

  Devin flickered, disappeared, then emerged again. She looked pained.

  "They're captive," she sighed, waving a pale hand towards the dark night outside her window.

  "No," Abby demanded, "please, no." She shook her head as if that might make it go away.

  Devin nodded, her nearly transparent curls bouncing in response.

  "There's a woman, a witch," Devin began, her green eyes glittering suddenly as if a surge of strength had poured in. "She can help you, she can help both of us."

  "Who is she?" Abby asked. "Where is she?"

  The trees whipped by and a blue sign said, 'REST AREA. 4 MILES.' When it came up, Abby quickly veered to the right and pulled into the empty parking area. The lights shone in the little brick building, but no late night patrons were stopped.

  "She is north of here. She is very special." Devin's image was much sharper now.

  Abby twisted to face her, studying her white skin, her long black eyelashes. She still wore the purple robe, the sparkling sleeves falling away from her bare forearms as she spoke. Her full lips were parted only slightly as she talked, like a ventriloquist.

  "She is called the Lourdes of Warning. She was once a very powerful witch."

  "Once?" Abby interrupted.

  "Yes, some very bad things happened…" Devin closed her eyes for a moment, as if retrieving this information from some unseen place. "She is still powerful, but she lives in solitude, complete solitude."

  Abby nodded and took mental notes, sensing a foreboding in Devin's words.

  "The woods where she lives are very unusual, magical, but it is the only way to reach her. You can get there; you are a witch and will be able to move through them with ease. Others would not be so lucky," Devin told her, her face serious.

  "Is it dangerous?" Abby asked, self-consciously rubbing her palms on the slick steering wheel.

  Devin took a moment to answer, then shook her head slowly. "Not dangerous, but it will be like nothing you've encountered before."

  "Okay, what do I do?" Abby asked, realizing that - dangerous or not - she had no other choice.

  Chapter 26

  After Devin described her task, Abby was alone again, driving recklessly deeper into the wilderness. Thick rows of pines lined the freeway, and the sparse small towns became ever fewer, eventually disappearing completely.

  The sun began to rise, peeking over the tree line and casting swaths of sunlight across the car’s hood.

  Devin had told her where to leave her car and enter the forest on foot. In the woods she would find a small gray tree carved with a symbol called the Fate Triad. Three linked half circles carved inside of a bowed triangle. From this place, she would travel west, approximately fifty yards, and come to a very large, very red weeping willow tree. Abby had never seen a red weeping willow, nor heard of one, but Devin assured her of its existence. Beneath this tree, she would find the Lourdes of Warning. The Lourdes would tell her where to find her family, but what's more, she would tell Abby how to destroy the lighter, which, Devin insisted, must be done quickly. Devin repeated the directions and told Abby that under no circumstances should she give the lighter to the Lourdes, not even for a second.

  Abby opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Devin had disappeared.

  Now, she drove through the early morning with fear gnawing anxiously at her thoughts.

  She tried to flip the lighter on and see through Vesta's eyes, but it would not light. It snapped and hissed, but refused to relinquish the flame hiding inside it.

  It took nearly three hours to reach the forest opening. A hidden road of ebony dirt, the kind that farmers coveted, led into the shadowy woods. Tall, needled pines stood in trim rows. As Abby carefully maneuvered her car into the thick brush, the pines gave way to a jumble of other trees. She saw beech, weeping willow, birch and black maple. They clumped together over thick moss and strangled ferns. Tiny streaks of sunlight pestered the shadows. The black dirt road snaked and twisted, ending abruptly at a massive, coffee colored tree flourishing with diamond-shaped, emerald leaves.

  She stepped from the car hesitantly, mentally rehearsing Devin's directions.

  She hated to travel on foot from the safety of the car. Although she knew that, as a witch, the car was more of a hindrance than help.

  Walking, she stared at the tall trees coated with neon green moss that chased up their thick, wrinkled trunks. The ground felt mushy, the twigs and mossy earth squishing beneath her. Minutes passed, she could feel time whizzing by like an untouchable breeze. Nothing could be stopped, the wheels were in motion.

  "Ohhh!" She fell hard on her hands, her left foot jammed beneath a thick root, and her yell ricocheted through the forest, sending a spiral of black crows out of a squat gray tree, its gnarled hands distinct.

  Abby crawled back to her feet and approached the tree slowly. There, engraved deep into the puckered bark, was the symbol that Devin had described, the Fate Triad. Glossy sap had seeped into the symbol, shining like a palm sized amber jewel.

  She turned and walked directly west, passing beneath the
canopies of bushy trees and tangled branches, all fighting towards the skinny shafts of sunlight peeking through. The ground moss began to disappear beneath shin-length ferns of such neon green that Abby bent and touched one. They were real.

  She would have spotted the Lourdes of Warning's home sooner, but her eyes kept lingering on pockets of tiny purple and blue flowers that twittered beneath the ferns, as if teasing Abby in her haste.

  The cardinal colored Weeping Willow flamed like a brilliant sore against the healthy green backdrop of the forest. Its long, red, skeletal arms brushed the ground. Abby could see nothing of the trunk, nothing of the shadows that lingered underneath its scarlet canopy, and nothing of the Lourdes. She would have liked to have knocked, but there was not exactly a door, or a wall, for that matter.

  Instead, she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth, not to lengthen her bellow, but to muffle it.

  "Hello," she squeaked, wincing as her voice died beneath the forest din.

  No response, not even a ruffle of birds this time to show signs of life. Perhaps the willow had eaten the Lourdes; it surely looked like it could.

  She took a step closer and then another, now she could smell the diseased looking tree. It reeked of patchouli, but not only that. It smelled as if the patchouli was meant to cover something dead, like dried flowers and incense burned at a place that housed corpses.

  Abby wanted to turn back, to distance herself from the rotted thing and whatever hid beneath its bloody branches, but she could not. Her parents could die, Sydney was dead, and cowardice was not an option.

  With a deep breath, she reached out and grabbed a handful of the weeping willow's branches, which were not dry as she expected, but wet and slimy. They slipped over her palms like long, slick worms, and she shoved them up over her head and ducked under, running forward. Some of the dripping limbs fell across her face and hair as she clambered through, fighting the urge to retch or scream. She wiped her hands on her pants, expecting to leave a red, gooey slime, but they were dry. She stared out at the branches from the awning they created, but could see nothing of the forest beyond. The dark, circular shadow that she stood in glowed a dull red, the floor was moss covered like the woods, but the moss was red and sponged down beneath her weight.