The Rabbit And The Raven

by Melissa Eskue Ousley

  Chapter Thirteen

  EYE OF THE NEEDLE

  “Where are they?” Jon yelled. “Did they make it?” He dug his heels into his horse’s sides, willing it to run faster.

  Marisol glanced over her shoulder as she rode. “I see them! David has Abby. They’re flying toward us,” she shouted.

  Cael scanned the sky. He reined his horse in to a trot and shifted in his saddle to get a better look. There was an expression of alarm on his face. “I cannot see them!”

  Jon and Marisol slowed their horses to match pace with Cael’s. “Look,” Marisol pointed, “there!”

  High above, Jon could make out a hazy silhouette. It was too high up and moving too fast to make out details, but it had to be David carrying Abby in his arms. Who else could it be?

  Cael nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. “I never should have left them.”

  Marisol shot him a look. “You had no choice. Come on!” She goaded her horse into a gallop.

  They were close to the Eye of the Needle now, but in the distance Jon could see riders from the city in pursuit—a lot of riders, based on the massive dust cloud in their wake.

  “Looks like David and Abby invited friends,” Jon frowned. “I hope they catch up to us before the Shadows do.”

  Peering down, David knew they were cutting it close. As he landed at the base of the Eye of the Needle, the riders were fast approaching.

  “’Bout time, slowpokes,” Jon said, his arms crossed. He eyed Abby. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Abby replied, disentangling herself from David’s embrace. “Just got into a little scrap with Lucia and her beasties.” Her voice was scratchy, but she seemed to have regained her senses. She was still weak though, and visibly shaking.

  David watched her take two unsteady steps before he intervened and helped her ease into a sitting position on the sand. Lucia sure had done a number on her. Abby needed to rest, but she couldn’t rest here, not with the Kruorumbrae on their heels.

  “The little girl?” Marisol asked.

  Abby shook her head. “They took her. I promised I’d save her, but I couldn’t.” There were tears in her eyes.

  David bent down and kissed the top of her head, and then got to work. He walked over to the symbol of the winged woman and placed his hands over it. With his eyes closed, David focused on letting the power flow through him and into the portal.

  Jon looked toward the city. “How much time do you think we have?”

  David opened his eyes to turn and look at Jon. “We didn’t have much of a head start before Lucia took up the chase.”

  Cael stared at the rising cloud of dust and frowned. “Not long. Minutes possibly. Swords at the ready.”

  David returned his focus to the portal. Blue light emanated from the palms of his hands, and around his neck, the Sign of the Throne started to glow.

  He heard Marisol draw her sword. “Let’s buy him as much time as we can.”

  After a moment, David let out a deep breath and the light coming from his hands disappeared. He backed away from the door and studied it. Then he unclasped the Sign of the Throne from around his neck and looked at it. Feeling a warm hand on his arm, he turned to see Abby next to him, her eyes wide with worry.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing’s happening,” David said. “When I opened the door before, I could feel the boundaries between our worlds weaken.” He could tell by the confusion on her face that further explanation was needed. “You know how when you push on a door that’s stuck, you can feel it give a little, right before it pops open? It felt like that.”

  “So the door is stuck?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel anything at all. It just feels…solid.”

  Abby took his hand. “Maybe if we tried it together? Like that first portal we opened?”

  “Worth a try,” David agreed.

  “No pressure, guys,” Jon called, “but we’ve got maybe two minutes here.”

  “Thanks, Jon,” Abby retorted, rolling her eyes. “That’s very helpful.”

  In spite of everything, David couldn’t help but smile at her. She gave him a lopsided grin, and he felt warmth pour into him. As he had done when working on the portal in the Newcastle Beach mansion, he held the Sign in his open palms. Abby placed her hands over his, and David looked into her eyes.

  There was a thrumming noise and blue light began to leak out from between their fingers. The light poured out onto the ground and pooled around the bottom of the door. There was a brief flash as the brightness of the light increased, and then the light was gone, extinguished like a blown-out birthday candle.

  “What happened?” Abby asked.

  “Nothing happened.” David had been certain it would work. Frustrated, he returned the Sign of the Throne to its place around his neck. “Maybe it’s us. Being exposed to Lucia’s power like that—maybe it drained us.”

  Cael left his post watching for the Kruorumbrae to inspect the door. He ran his fingers along the groove between the door’s edges and the stone frame. When he turned back to David and Abby, his face was grim. “I am afraid it is the door that is the problem. I should have seen this before—this portal can only be opened from one side.”

  “What?” David asked in disbelief. “No, that can’t be. Can it?”

  “I am sorry. I failed you, Solas Beir—I should have known,” Cael said. “We never should have shut that door.”

  “But if we hadn’t, those things from the casino would have followed us through,” Jon called out, looking over his shoulder. “We had to shut it.”

  “You speak true, Jon, but now we have no means of escape save the Barren,” Cael replied.

  “Won’t Lucia just follow us?” Abby asked.

  “Perhaps. But the Barren is formidable. She may give up her pursuit,” Cael considered. “She is no fool.”

  A scream pierced the dry, desert air. It sounded like a battle cry. David looked up to see the shape of a woman with wings, silhouetted against the sun. It looked just like the symbol on the portal.

  “The Daughters of Mercy,” Abby whispered, clutching his arm.

  “Maybe they’re coming to help us,” Jon said. “We don’t know that they chose a side, do we?”

  “They chose,” Abby said, trembling. “They didn’t choose us.”

  “Maybe we can change their minds,” David suggested. “Come on, Abby—I’ll do the talking and you try to push them with your mind to come to our side.”

  Abby looked scared enough to jump out of her skin, but she wrapped her arms around his neck anyway. David lifted her into the air, flying toward the cave at the very top of the towering rock spire. The Daughters soared to meet them. They circled around David and Abby, and then dove down toward their friends.

  Jon, Marisol, and Cael ducked in unison as a screeching Daughter of Mercy swooped low over their heads, her arms outstretched, her fingers curled into grasping, greedy talons.

  Jon shuddered, remembering the banshee screams of the lamia in the rainforest. He waited until the Daughter had gained plenty of altitude before daring to rise. “Did you see her face? She looked like a corpse!”

  Marisol’s eyes were wide with horror. “That’s not what I saw.”

  “On your guard, my friends,” Cael shouted, tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword. “The Kruorumbrae are here!”

  David wrapped his arms more tightly around Abby’s waist. She looked as petrified as the Eye of the Needle. “Keep projecting your emotions, Abby,” he said, trying, despite his own terror, to keep his voice even and calm. “This will work. I know it will.” It sure wouldn’t work if the emotion Abby was projecting was her fear, but saying that out loud wouldn’t help.

  One of the Daughters stopped circling and floated in midair, directly in front of David. She flapped her great white wings lazily and stared into his eyes.

  “I am the Solas Beir,” David said. “I serve the Light. Join me—together we can defeat the Kruorumbrae.”


  The Daughter smiled—she had the face of a child, a look of sweet innocence unspoiled by darkness. Golden ringlets framed her cherub face. “Greetings, Solas Beir,” she said, her voice musical and light as air. “What price would you pay for us to join your cause?”

  David returned her smile in an effort to hide his disgust. Mercenary, he thought. Mercenary with the face of an angel. “I wish to bring peace to our land. You will be richly rewarded for fighting alongside us.” As an afterthought he added, “There is much gold in Caislucis. Help us and it is yours.”

  The Daughter’s face shimmered—now she looked exactly like Abby. Abby recoiled, gasping and clamping her hand over her mouth, as if she were trying to hold in her shock, or maybe a scream.

  David feared she would let go of him and grasped her tightly against his chest. The muscles in his arms tensed and began to ache.

  Abby looked up at him and seemed to recognize the strain she was putting on him. She wrapped both of her arms around his neck again, and he relaxed slightly.

  The smile on the Daughter’s face was Abby’s. “We have already been richly rewarded, and care not for gold.” Then her face changed again. It was still Abby’s face, but her blue eyes turned black, soulless, not unlike those of the creatures waiting on the other side of the one-way portal. “David,” she purred seductively in Abby’s voice. “Come with me, David.”

  “No,” David spat, shaking his head. “Never.”

  Suddenly, one of the Daughters slammed into him from behind, knocking the breath from his lungs, blindsiding him in an attempt to pitch Abby out of his arms. The first Daughter smiled wickedly and sank her talons into Abby’s back, ripping at the fabric of her clothes, trying to tear her away from him.

  Abby screamed out his name and tightened her grip around his neck, burrowing her face against his chest.

  Gasping for air, David tugged Abby closer with the arm that was anchored around her waist. With his free hand, he released a ball of blue fire, forcing the Daughter with Abby’s face backward. The Daughter’s wings caught fire, incinerating in an instant. She fell into the fray below. Her sister released her hold on David’s back and rocketed down, trying to catch her.

  “Seize them,” Lucia ordered the Kruorumbrae. “I would prefer prisoners, but do what you must to subdue them.”

  Malden interpreted this last part very loosely. He’d subdue little Marisol all right, but her boyfriend would not get off so easy.

  Malden had been riding in his Kruorumbrae form, that of a goblin boy, with a malevolent grin permanently seared on his face. The burn he had received from his last encounter with the Solas Beir had never healed. The nautilus shape of the Sign of the Throne was etched in his cheek, a blistering sore that still oozed black pus.

  At his mistress’s command, he leapt from his horse, landing on all fours in the shape of a black cat, now the size of a Great Dane—one with a prehensile tail and a disturbingly human face. His comrades followed suit, pouring from their mounts like so much dark sludge, solidifying into the stuff of nightmares.

  Malden could see his pretty dulce standing between the Reyes boy and the knight, swords held out in front of them, their backs against the solid rock base of the Eye of the Needle. They were going nowhere fast.

  With the arrival of the Kruorumbrae, the Daughters of Mercy left their quarry on the sands below in favor of a coordinated attack on the Solas Beir himself. David was surrounded. The Daughters were clawing at him from all sides, steadily wrenching Abby away from him. They pinned his arms and carried her off toward the cave. He could see her real face peeking out among all those twisted renditions of it. “Abby!” he yelled, and broke free, flying after her.

  Abby was kicking at them as best she could, fighting to get free. But she was so high above the ground—what would happen if she escaped their grasp? There was nowhere to go but down.

  David slammed into the mass of Daughters holding her captive, and managed to pull a few of them off Abby. He could see angry red lines all over her neck and back where those terrible talons had sliced her skin, and bruises forming on her arms from being rudely yanked from his embrace. He set another Daughter on fire as he struggled to reach Abby. “Let go of her!” he shouted.

  “As you wish,” one of the Daughters replied, and as one, they released their hold on Abby. She was falling so fast, and yet her eyes were locked on his—it felt as if time had stopped, as if she were frozen in midair and the ground were rushing up to meet her.

  David dived for her, but he knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. Abby shuddered as if embracing her fate—and suddenly she was gone. In her place was a white raven. David’s mouth dropped open in a mixture of relief and awe. Then she was obscured from his sight as the Daughters surrounded him again. They were pinning his hands behind him, forcing him up against the rock spire.

  David twisted his head to the side and caught a flash of white—Abby racing through the air with several Daughters close behind. They were herding her into the wide black mouth of their lair. One of them reached out, and for a moment, he thought the Daughter would catch Abby by the throat, but she was faster than the winged woman, and the Daughter’s talon sliced her raven wing instead. He saw Abby falter, the injury to her wing throwing her off balance, but then she recovered before being swallowed up by the cavern’s dark depths.

  David managed to get a hand free and set another Daughter on fire, and then saw that one of them had turned on the others, fighting to free him.

  No, wait, he thought. It wasn’t one of the Daughters—it was Erela. She must have flown across the Barren to come to his aid.

  It was a vicious fight—Erela had been cast out, and she was paying dearly for her rebellion, for daring to defy her sisters once again. Erela gave back as much as she was given, her own face a mask of fury.

  Erela maneuvered behind one of her sisters. She broke the Daughter’s neck in one swift motion, and then let go. The Daughter dropped from the sky like a stone. David wasn’t surprised that Erela didn’t stop to watch—she wasn’t the sentimental type, after all.

  She flew straight to David, pulling off one of his attackers and following the same, methodical protocol she’d used when disposing of her other sister.

  David didn’t mind—he quite appreciated her efficiency. He set another Daughter on fire, and then another, and found that he and Erela now faced but a single Daughter. The others they’d dispatched were lying, limbs askew, on the sand below.

  “This one is mine, Solas Beir,” Erela said. “You get the c’aislingaer.”

  “Thank you,” David breathed, and shot up the rock wall to the Eye.

  “They’re eating the horses!” Cael heard Marisol shout above the din of the battle. Over the shoulder of the Kruorumbrae he was fighting, he could see their horses collapsing and heard their primal screams over the guttural roars of the creatures that had taken them down.

  “That’s just wrong,” Jon yelled, slicing through the gut of a Blood Shadow. “How are we supposed to cross the Barren now?” He punctuated each word with another hack of his sword through the creature’s thick flesh.

  “Win this battle and we will take theirs!” Cael shouted, beheading one monster and spinning to run his sword through another. He was still more skilled than his students, but they had learned much. Perhaps there was a chance they would live through this.

  Or perhaps not. The Kruorumbrae who had been busy devouring the horses had finished their meal and abandoned the drained equine corpses to engage Cael and his young warriors. These creatures were larger than their comrades, and they were more powerful than ever now that they’d had a little snack. Cael felt searing heat and looked down to see one of the creatures grinning wickedly as it viciously raked its cruel claws across his torso. I stand corrected, he thought, sinking to his knees, watching blood gush from his gaping wound. I may not live through this after all.

  “Cael!” Marisol screamed. She rammed her sword through the creature she’d been fighting and leapt ove
r the one sprawled at Jon’s feet—it was newly dead and still twitching.

  The monster that had injured Cael was standing over him, its arm raised to swipe at Cael’s head. Marisol raised her sword and brought it down smoothly. She severed the arm, relieving the beast of the need for its appendage as she sent the creature swiftly from its world into the next.

  “Keep those things away from us!” Marisol shouted to Jon. “I’ve got to help him.”

  Jon grunted and nodded—he was too busy fighting to answer any other way.

  Three of the bolts of fabric Marisol had purchased lay propped next to the now-defunct portal. She had set them there, meaning to grab them as she slipped through. Marisol stepped over Cael and retrieved one of the bolts. She eased Cael into a sitting position with his back against the rock wall. “Can you scoot forward a bit?” she asked, unwinding the cloth from its wooden spindle.

  Cael grimaced and complied, his jaw clenched against the pain as Marisol wrapped the fabric around his waist, tightly binding his abdomen with it. She placed his hands over the wound, then pressed her own hands down on his, applying pressure to stop the flow of the blood. The blue silk turned red between their fingers. “Hold on,” she cried.

  “No promises.” Cael smiled grimly. He knew he would bleed out long before the battle was finished.

  “Don’t you say that,” Marisol chided him. “You’re going back to marry Eulalia—even if we are making a mess of her pretty silk.”

  “She will have to forgive us,” Cael responded weakly.

  That was when Malden grabbed Marisol.

  Abby was flying blind. Whatever advantage her raven eyes might have had over her human ones was rendered null and void in the darkness of the Daughters’ cave. She had taken on this new form in full sunlight, and there was no time for her eyes to adjust to the complete blackness that now enveloped her. Not with the things that wore her face hot on her tail.