Lillian couldn’t hide in the shadow of the tree forever. As he’d said, her family would return home and be captured by these freaks. Clearly, Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d said.
Magic? Yes, these individuals were downright strange, but magic? Even seeing the stone smoke when the other man touched it could have been a trick.
“I am patient up to a point,” Alexander said. “If you make me go through these stones to get you, my patience will run out before I reach you. Your choice.”
She shook her head. He frowned and his eyebrows scrunched together. Without another word, he focused on the stone standing nearest to him and began a chant low in his throat. Placing one hand upon its surface, he grimaced as power arced, its blue light lancing out from one stone to the next in line. Unseen until now, a dome of energy encircled her and her tree.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.
But it was.
Whatever the small man was doing weakened the dome. Where before the dome had appeared a solid blue, its colouration was now patchy and frayed. A fissure formed along the base of the stone he touched, the finest of cracks.
Behind Alexander, a disturbance in the ranks distracted her and she missed the exact moment the stone shattered. Shards flew in all directions, damaging the other stones and cutting down meadow grasses and prairie flowers like a sickle. She gasped as a sudden agony bloomed to life along her hip. There was a second throb, higher up, spanning two of her ribs on the right side.
She should have been safe hiding behind the tree’s trunk, yet some of the stone shrapnel must have hit her. Blood, hot and sticky, dampened her t-shirt and the waist of her jeans. Seconds later, the burning sensation turned numb. A deep cold started to throb in her side, as if her life was being sucked away by the wound.
She stumbled over a root and slammed her shoulder on one of the redwood’s ground-sweeping branches. Teetering against it, she gathered herself, then ducked under the branch to see what was going on. Instinct guided her eyes up the tree. Two thin, blade-like fragments of stone were embedded in the side of the tree’s trunk.
Pink liquid dripped off the fragments and dropped onto the ground below. More ran down the trunk. Astonished, she touched the liquid. It was slick like sap, but smelt coppery. Tree sap mixed with blood? Another rivulet flowed down the trunk and coated her fingers.
Her legs grew rubbery. Numbness crept up from the wounds, seeping through her blood and across her thoughts. Screams and snarls interrupted the numbness. Had some of the other creatures been caught by the exploding stones?
“Your life blood is watering the dirt and leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.
What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace? Lillian twisted toward Alexander and winced as pain stabbed through her hip. The little man stood a few feet away, admiring the tree, his head tilted to look up at its top, thirty-five feet above his head. He walked around its circumference, studying it from different angles.
Resting against the tree took some of the pressure off her injured side. She eased one hand above her head. Sliding her fingers along the bark, she sought the rivulets of liquid and used them to guide her to the first stone fragment. Her fingers closed on a cold, sharp object. She clawed at it with her nails, dragging it from the wood.
Agony burned in her hip. She embraced the pain. It was better than the cold sucking sensation of having her life leeched out of her injury. Her fingers worked at the second piece of stone as Alexander finished skirting the tree and came to face her.
With a grunt, she freed the second shard and flung it with all her strength. Sap-blood flew in a splattering arc and the blood-coated stone collided with Alexander. He screamed in agony, a tone of glass-shattering quality. She winced. Hopefully such an unholy sound signaled a mortal injury.
Glancing to confirm if her theory was correct, she spotted the fragment embedded in his neck where an artery should have been. The stone smoked and hissed. Other drops of her tree’s blood had eaten away at his skin, like she’d tossed acid upon him. A human would have hit the ground, dead by now. She didn’t know what he was, but as impossible as it seemed, he wasn’t human.
The creature collapsed to his knees but continued to smile at her. Oh, he was in pain. She could see it in his pinched expression: the white skin, drawn tight across his face, the slight greyish hue of his complexion. But it was the sharp fangs when he hissed at her which gave him away. A vampire? Impossible. There was no such thing. But what else could he be?
Another blonde male and a muscular female joined Alexander. While they were seeing to his wounds, Lillian took a step forward. Her sight blurred strangely and she swayed. Instead of the carnage of the glade, Lillian’s grandmother stood before her, eyes closed and face serene.
Gran’s hands moved in a precise, intricate pattern as she chanted low in her throat. There was a soft-edged quality about her. She looked faded, like an unfocused old picture. Her grandmother wasn’t really there.
“Lillian, get to the gargoyle,” her grandmother said, her voice echoing as if from a long way away. “Use your blood.”
Lillian shook her head, trying to clear her vision. She slumped against the tree. A low-hanging branch offered support. She wanted to believe she was hearing her grandmother’s voice. Obeying her commands sounded like a good idea. Lillian gauged the distance from her tree to the gargoyle’s statue: a few feet, ten maybe, fifteen at the most.
Ten feet or ten miles, it didn’t really matter. She doubted she could walk more than two steps before she fell on her face. But her grandmother needed her to get to the gargoyle statue. Maybe it was another kind of protection like the stone circle had been.
Could it be so simple? Could killing these creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection? She needed to try. She was already dead. She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her family.
Gathering her will, she straightened and held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a stone, and fell to her knees. As she forced herself back up, she saw someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The strange, feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian and her goal. Anger stirred to life. How dare these monsters come into her home and threaten to kill her and her family?
A sense of something powerful and old flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step, and then she snapped her arm up and forward, burying the stone shard in the woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, and she gasped in shock.
Growling, the woman clawed at the stone fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination, something slammed into her. Claws ripped into her back. Kicking desperately, Lillian dragged herself out from under the crazed woman. With a last desperate strength, she crawled up the pedestal and over the gargoyle’s stone leg. Protected on three sides by his body and wings, she collapsed forward onto his lap. She wanted to close her eyes and know no more pain or suffering—to know the peace of cold stone.
Again, those strange instincts stirred within her. All she could think to call it was power: old power, deep and familiar. Her body tingled. Was this what dying was like? Was this her soul preparing to leave? Such a strange sensation. It didn’t seem right, dying like this. A useless death. Never to know why her world had been turned on its head.
Sleep called, wooing her into darkness. All she wanted was to answer that summons, but that old power within her insisted otherwise. She lifted her head and gazed at the gargoyle. There was something different. Her eyes focused on a mark upon his chest. Someone had painted a symbol on her gargoyle. A small part of her mind took affront to that. Why deface a statue? Her min
d fuzzed in and out of focus. Her grandmother wanted her to . . . wake the gargoyle?
Her attention drifted back to the strange symbol on his chest. On closer inspection it glowed, and it wasn’t painted on his chest like she’d thought, but hovered an inch above it. She reached out with her blood-covered hand and probed the symbol. Her hand passed through it and touched the cold stone behind it. A flash of light, and it was like she’d touched a high-voltage wire. Her hand fused to the stone as it turned hot all around her. She screamed. Her body and the stone now glowed with a blue light. Power danced and pulsed between them. A wave grew, about to crest. She screamed, knowing she would be consumed if she didn’t direct it in some way.
Ancient memories sparked to life and flooded words and thoughts into her mind. With nothing else to do, she screamed the words.
“I trust to the Mother’s choice. Dark Watcher, immortal servant of the Light, with my power I summon you to wake. With my will I do claim you. Hear me and awake. Evil walks the land. Your Sorceress has need.” Darkness crept across her vision, stealing the sights of the world from her until only the grey-edged image of the brooding stone gargoyle remained.
At her cry the power surged into the stone. It softened under her hands. The shadow of his wings moved up and away as his muzzle dipped down. A warm, wet tongue brushed her cheek.
She collapsed forward against his warmth.
Chapter Three
Stone no longer, he answered his lady’s call. The dark world came alive around him as his senses awoke one by one. The thump of many hearts hummed in his ears. One fluttered rapid and weaker than the rest, on the edge of death. He inhaled a deep breath.
Air tainted with blood and death-scent filled his lungs.
A warm weight slumped across his lap.
Blood covered him in a sticky coating.
He opened his eyes for the first time in many years as his mind slowly sorted order from the chaos of his senses. A woman lay sprawled across his lap. Surprise melted away as cold dread stole across his soul. She lay still, her pale skin grey-tinted. A sheen of sweat covered her face. The only colour was the bright splash of her blood.
His lady’s blood. Horror clamped his stomach and unleashed a churning void in his middle. He dragged in another great lungful of air, the lingering scent of her desperation and fear strong on the back of his tongue. Blood and burning fury rushed through his veins with each beat of his heart. Pointing his muzzle at the nearest enemy, he roared. But it didn’t expel all the hate and helpless rage trapped within. Again and again, he howled out his agony until it echoed across the width of the glade in a deafening wave.
Rage destroyed reason. Muscles tensed for battle as talons sprang from his fingertips. He gathered his lady into his arms and fed her power while he straightened from his crouch to face his enemies. At the sight of them cowering away, another low rumble built within him. His lips curled back from his teeth, the need to rend and destroy overwhelming.
The invaders fell back as they retreated to a safer distance. By the scents which permeated the meadow, his enemies were a mix of fae-bloods. A breeze picked up and blew the weakening essence of evil to his nostrils. Silent now, he curved his wings around his shoulders and cupped the escaping scent closer to him. He’d nearly missed it: the corruption of a demon-touched corpse. A Riven.
One of his lady’s attackers knew what he was, and the Riven had run to save itself. He lowered his lady to the ground with gentle care as he whispered spells to staunch the flow of blood. While he unfurled his wings, he gathered power. Using his soul-link to the Spirit Realm, he tapped into the torrent of creative magic. The cold power from the Spirit Realm mixed with the warm air of the Mortal Realm, creating lift. Magic whirled around him like gale winds before a thunderstorm.
A fae-blood shapeshifter with a gaping hole in her stomach growled and started to back away from him while three of her comrades advanced. By her unmistakable wolf-musk scent, she was dire wolf. With the flick of his tail, he decapitated the female. Before her body toppled to the ground, he was moving. He swept out a talon-tipped hand, ripping out the throat of one of the males and then gutted a third with a kick from his hind legs. He pushed the body over backwards, and lunged at the next creature within reach: a silver-skinned female with pointed ears. A snapped neck freed her soul from the anchor of her body.
He was winning, but there were too many to fight his way free, and half his attention was trained on his lady. She was losing her battle to live. Why was her magic not healing her as it should?
Another dire wolf female darted at him. His tail snaked up and speared her in the throat. He didn’t have time for a prolonged battle. This needed to end, now. He directed his magic at the encircling horde. Threads of power condensed in the air and the silvery wisps latched onto any warm-blooded creature near enough to touch. The scent of burning flesh filled the air and the screams of his enemies echoed in his ears.
Seeing he had devastated half their comrades, the other creatures vanished into the shadows of a surrounding maze. He curled his lips and caught their individual scents on his tongue, committing each to memory. When he had them all, he sent his magic to hunt them.
Back at his lady’s side, he lifted her into his arms, gathering her closer so he could share some of his heat. She was far paler than she should have been. Her magic should be healing her, and yet it wasn’t. Why?
While she’d been injured by creatures of darkness, her injuries didn’t look great enough to cause this kind of weakness. For that matter, her attackers shouldn’t have been much of a threat. Even in the Mortal Realm, she should have had power and instinct enough to destroy what he had dispatched with ease.
Detaching a portion of his consciousness from his body, he sent it into the woman lying senseless in his arms. Her power still drained away.
He checked the weavings he’d placed over her wounds, but they were holding. No power hemorrhaged from those points. Elsewhere then, but where? His consciousness stretched beyond his body, following the scent trail of magic back to its source. A tree. Two long gashes. Heartwood deep.
By the Light, his lady was a dryad!
Blood leaked down the tree’s majestic trunk and saturated the ground at its roots. Instinct jerked him into motion and he summoned wards to shield the wounds. The prickle of power danced along his skin a moment before he directed the spell. An insubstantial webbing spun out between his outstretched hands, like a delicate blue lattice. It adhered to the bark and sealed the wounds, preventing further loss of the hamadryad’s blood.
A hamadryad in the Mortal Realm. Impossible. A dryad’s spirit tree required magic to grow.
Yet here his lady’s young hamadryad grew, defying everything he knew of magic. She must have had a small cutting with her when he’d rescued her from the Battle Goddess’s Kingdom and brought her here.
Her soft moan brought him back to the present. It didn’t matter how her spirit tree came to be here. Here it grew, and here it bled its lifeblood upon the ground. He dropped to all fours and padded over to the tree. Circling, he sniffed at the ground until he pinpointed the area where the greatest concentration of magic saturated the loam. The scent of sap and blood triggered instincts and dragged him back to memories of his infancy.
He had first come to awareness hearing his mother’s deep slow heartbeat and the sounds of wind and lashing rain in her branches as he grew within the heart of her tree.
There was something here he needed.
Safe in his watery cocoon, deep inside his mother’s wooden heart, he’d grown strong.
Ah, yes.
Along with the food and water of the earth, he had absorbed his dryad mother’s memories.
There it was—the knowledge to heal his mistress. More of his memories returned, both recent and ancient. Heal her hamadryad and the dryad should live.
Tonight, the second time his lady had called him had been as chaotic as the first. Worse. Now she lay dying along with her tree. If her hamadryad had been o
lder, he could have put her in the tree to rest and heal, but such an attempt in this magic-less place might kill the tree. He scrounged his mother’s memories for other healing methods. He needed to find another way, something that would work in this realm.
And quickly. The power was dissipating, sucked up by the earth like water on drought-cursed land. He dropped into a trance and summoned his power for the delicate work of separating his mistress’s magic from the magic-starved land.
The greatest concentration of magic pooled just below the grass, in the layer where small fibrous roots sought food and water. With one hand pressed against her trunk and the other on the ground, he flexed his talons. After he absorbed the magic from the ground, he drew it up into his body, purified it, and returned it to the spirit tree. He continued until the smallest scrap, every little fragment, no matter how small, was returned to the hamadryad.
After he reinforced the wards on the hamadryad’s larger wounds, he healed the small punctures his talons had made. Those larger wounds would need intensive healing, but must wait for now. Mending the tree would be useless if…
No, he would not permit failure.
Returning to the prone dryad, he sat on his hunches and lifted her into his lap. He licked at her face. Feeling her skin’s clamminess and noting her pale colouring, he knew he didn’t have long to prepare for healing.
But before he began the arduous task of healing her, he’d need to find a shelter more defendable than this maze. He repositioned the small dryad in his arms and broke into a ground-eating stride. He navigated his way free of the leafy corridors and emerged into a lush garden. The serene shadows beckoned to him, offering a way to hide from the sun’s revealing rays, and he summoned a weaving of invisibility.
The Avatars Series: Books 1-3 Page 2