04 Silence

by Kailin Gow

  Briony didn’t care, she was too busy kneeling by her father, trying to heal him as she had Kevin. King Waltham shook his head, whispering up.

  “It is too late, and I am too old, Briony. Saving me would take more strength than you have. I am just glad I could be here to help you.” Briony had to kneel then, so that he could whisper into her ear. “I wish I had time to spend with you, so that I could see you learn what you’re capable of, child. You will have to learn that from Vigor and Sophie, instead, now. That dragon of yours will help, too. But know this. The scepter is safe, for now, but you will have to keep it that way.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Briony said.

  “You should. You must. You must promise me you will keep it safe. Promise me.”

  Briony hesitated, but then nodded. “I promise. How do I even find it, though?”

  King Waltham smiled. “You will find it. It will begin calling you, if you are the true heir of Palisor, and you will know where it is.”

  “You can’t die,” Briony said, trying not to cry. “I just found you. I only just found out what I am.”

  King Waltham looked past her, and Briony got the feeling that he wasn’t looking at anything she would be able to see. “You are the daughter of kings and queens. Heir of my blood. Rule Palisor wisely. It will protect both of our worlds. Always know, daughter, that I loved your mother dearly, and I love you and Vigor.”

  With that, the ancient king closed his eyes, gave a last gasp, and died in Briony’s arms.

  Epilogue

  With the King’s death, came silence. Nobody in the room spoke. Even the vampires in the room have felt the thunder that rumbled through the entire castle, shaking the stone walls and floors with anger.

  The King of Palisor had died, and the land felt his death, trembled and wept with it. As if to show the depth of anguish Palisor felt, a fresh wave of rain poured down to the ground falling freely like tears.

  Nobody seemed to have the right words. Kevin moved to Briony, taking her gently into his arms and drawing her away from King Waltham while Briony cried. This hurt more than she had thought it would. She had barely known her biological father, yet somehow, that made it worse, not better.

  If it was bad for her though, it was worse for Vigor. The normally expressionless young Hugtandalfer took his father’s body up in his arms, cradling it like a child, grief clear in every line of his face. He wouldn’t look at any of them directly.

  “I’m too late, then.” Briony looked up to see the King’s brother, Leytham, entering the room. Vigor looked up too, and for a moment, there was more anger in his features than grief.

  “Yes, you’re too late. If you had been here-”

  Leytham nodded. “I would have fought that battle for him. I was not. It’s not me you’re angry with though, is it my prince?”

  “I was fighting Marcus. I could have taken him. I should have fought instead of my father, and I didn’t. I didn’t.” Vigor looked away again. To Briony’s surprise, Aunt Sophie moved over to him to lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. Vigor tensed as she did it, but seemed to relax as he saw who it was.

  “I have lost a brother today,” Leytham said, and then sighed. “Such a stupid word, lost. It makes it sound like I have mislaid him somewhere. Let us say it as it is. My brother is dead.” He shook his head. “And even that is not the worst of it, because there is no time to grieve. Whoever holds the scepter holds the key to Palisor and the mortal world both, and the vampires will take it if they can.”

  Right then, Briony didn’t care. She was too busy just holding onto Kevin. Even as she did that, though, she looked over his shoulder at Fallon. The young vampire was staring straight back at her, his eyes unwavering. There shouldn’t be the urge to hold him at a time like that, yet there it was, deep in the heart of Briony. She wanted to go to him and hold him as tightly as she held Kevin. Wanted his arms around her too. She could see that Fallon wanted it as much as she did.

  Yet Briony knew that they couldn’t. Not in Palisor. Not now. She was Hugtandalfer, and he was vampire, and after this, the two could never be at peace. The vampires had killed the Hugtandalfer’s only king, a much beloved king and their Champion.

  Going into his arms would have caused much more pain.

  Briony looked past Fallon then, to where Fletcher and Archer stood on the broken edge of the room, perched like two high divers on the high stones of the castle. They spread their arms and leapt almost simultaneously. A second later, two huge, reptilian forms rose on the wind, powering away into the distance with furious wing beats. Briony moved closer to the edge, watching them, and some flicker of movement below drew her eye downwards.

  Marcus. Marcus was following them.

  “Where are they going?” Kevin asked. It took Briony a moment to realize that he was asking her.

  “After the scepter,” Briony said, knowing that it was true as she said it, though she wasn’t sure how. “Father… the King… said that the dragons would know where it is.”

  Kevin dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you know where it is, Briony?”

  Briony was going to shake her head, but she paused. She knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but in that moment, she knew. There was only one place it could be, so Briony nodded instead.

  “Kevin, we have to get back to Wicked before Marcus and his vampires do.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “It’s there?”

  “It is,” Briony said. “I’m sure of it.”

  *****

  Wicked Woods continues in

  Sight

  Book 5 of Wicked Woods

  Release Date will be Announced

  through theEDGEbooks.com

  Sneak Preview from

  FADE

  Book 1 of the FADE Series™

  By Kailin Gow

  ONE

  My name is Celestra Caine. I am seventeen years old, which makes me a senior at Richmond High. I never thought this would happen to me, but it has… I’m one of those people you see every day, go to school with, remember seeing at the supermarket or the mall, and then one day you don’t hear about them any longer. They’re gone, and eventually, you forget them.

  Not that I’m easy to forget, as much as I might occasionally wish that I were. I’m tall, about five-seven, and I’m willowy. Built for running, my mom always says. Then there’s my hair. It’s a bright blonde that always attracts attention, from men and women. The women always want to know what I’ve done with it, and some of them won’t believe that it’s simply my natural hair color. The men… like I said, sometimes I wish I didn’t attract quite so much attention. Sometimes I think it might be better if I blended in a little more.

  It’s not all bad, though. My boyfriend, Grayson, loves my hair. He loves touching it, and I love it when he’s that close to me. I love it when he gives me that look he has that says, not just that he loves me, but that he always will. That I’m the only girl for him. It’s worth standing out a little for a look like that from a guy like Grayson.

  I first met him running track- he’s the captain of the school team, so it’s probably appropriate that I’m at practice with him on the day it starts. Then again, I’m at practice with him most days, so maybe it was always going to work out like that.

  We finish up, and Grayson invites me back to his place for dinner, but I can’t. I have to be home, so I tell him that I’ll see him tomorrow and get going.

  It doesn’t take me long to make my way home, since it’s not that far from the school. The house is nice enough, in a neighborhood where there’s no trouble, and there are plenty of families around. Dad’s car is in the drive, so I guess he must have gotten back early from his work as a biochemical engineer.

  Mom will be there too by now. She teaches kindergarten, and she’s always home before me.

  Even as I walk through the front door, I can picture her in the kitchen, working away at dinner, maybe yelling at my brother, Bailey, not to
spend too much time online before he’s done his homework. It’s just how things are in our house.

  Except today, something is different. I know that from the moment I set foot through the door.

  I can’t put my finger on it for a second or two, but then I realize what it is. The house is quiet.

  “Mom? Dad? Hello?” I call it out, moving through into the living room, then the kitchen. There’s no sign of either of them. They aren’t there when I check the rest of the rooms on the ground floor, either, which is weird. By 6 pm, at least one of them is always there.

  Still, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach is just an overactive imagination playing tricks on me. For all that I still can’t help feeling that there’s something wrong, it’s not like the place has been trashed, or anything. It’s not like anything has obviously been stolen, or is out of place. The opposite, if anything. The whole ground floor is neat, tidy.

  Maybe Mom and Dad have just gone next door for a moment. I latch onto that thought, heading upstairs. Bailey will know. He might not pay much attention to things that don’t involve computers, but Mom and Dad will at least have told him where they were going.

  “Bailey?” I knock on the door to his room, but there’s no answer. Telling myself that he probably has headphones on while he’s playing one of those online games of his, I invoke big sister’s prerogative and open the door anyway.

  Bailey isn’t there either. And his room’s neat.

  Too neat. Bailey is, like little brothers everywhere, I guess, a one boy disaster zone. This looks like one of those occasions when Mom has finally gotten tired of telling him to clean his room and done it for him, which means that Bailey can’t have been back since.

  In fact, the whole house has that feel. Like someone has scrubbed it from top to bottom, and no one has been in it to mess it up yet. That probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me, it’s enough.

  Enough to send me hurrying around the house, looking for clues as to what might be happening. Because there’s something happening. I’m certain of it.

  I go to search every room again, even though it doesn’t make sense. After all, Mom and Dad and Bailey aren’t about to leap out from behind the sofa, are they? Thereify"s still no sign of them. More than that, beyond the car in the drive, there’s still no sign that any of them has even been home.

  I check my messages. Maybe there’s an explanation there. There’s nothing. There’s nothing when I check my emails, either. Not even the usual stuff I’d get most days, which only makes me bite my lip harder with the worry of it. I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.

  Should I call the cops? That thought springs into my head from nowhere. What would I tell them, though? That something doesn’t feel right in my house, and that it looks like a team of cleaners has been through the place? They’d laugh at me, or worse, accuse me of wasting their time.

  I haven’t called my parents yet, so I try that next. I get out my cell phone and call the number for my father. It doesn’t even ring. Instead, I just get this message, saying “Error, number not recognized.”

  The same thing happens when I call my mother, and when I try to connect to the number for the cell phone Bailey has ‘for emergencies’. I’ve sometimes wondered what kind of emergencies a ten year old can have. I guess now I know. I’m breathing faster now, and I know I’m starting to panic. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in D.C. Not that I know what “This kind of thing” is yet.

  I punch in another obvious number. That of my Aunt Chrissie. She’s my mother’s sister, and my parents always say that if anything serious happens, and they aren’t around, I should ring her. I’m not sure what good it’s meant to do, ringing a woman we hardly ever see to come and ride in to save the day, but right now, I’m willing to try anything.

  “Error. Number not-”

  “Stupid thing!” I throw my phone and it bounces off the sofa, coming to rest on the carpet. I stand there seething with anger at it for a minute, my head spinning as I try to make some sense of all this.

  There has to be a logical explanation for all of it, right?

  People don’t just… disappear.

  Only, I can’t think of an explanation that works. Unless I’m willing to believe that my parents and brother have all chosen to call in on one of the neighbors together right at the moment when a freak fault has developed in my phone, and what are the chances of that?

  This is really starting to weird me out. So much so that I can barely breathe with it, while my stomach is tight with the apprehension running through it. Nothing good is happening. I’m certain of that now. I just wish I were as certain about what to do next. I need to calm down. To think.

  Grayson. I latch onto thoughts of him like a life preserver. He’s always been my rock; always been there for me. Whenever I panic about not getting good enough grades to make the track scholarship to Georgetown, he’s the one who talks me through it and helps me study. When I’m down about my track times or just annoyed with my little brother, he’s the one who picks me up.

  Even though this feels so much more serious than that, I snatch up my phone and speed dial his number. For once, I don’t get that stupid message, either. Now all I need is for Grayson to pick up.

  Come on, Grayson, pick up.

  He answers on the fifth ring, though given how fast my pulse is currently racing, it feels far longer.

  “Hello?” he asks. “Celestra?”

  I’m so happy to hear his voice in that moment that I can’t think of anything to say. There’s too much of it, and it all sounds so crazy. There’s the house, and the emptiness, and the stuff with my phone. For a couple of seconds, all I can do is stand there, listening to him on the other end of the phone like some kind of weird stalker.

  “Celes, is that you? Are you all right?”

  His use of that pet version of my name snaps me out of it. This is Grayson. I can tell him anything, even the strange stuff. He’ll find a way to make all this make sense, or at least a way to make me feel better about it. I open my mouth to explain. To simply say his name.

  Before I can get the words out, my cell phone dies. Just dies, without an explanation.

  There’s no power, even though I’m sure I charged it up this morning. It won’t turn on, it won’t light up, and it certainly won’t let me say anything to the one person who might be able to help me. I stand there, just staring at it dumbly, for a second after a second.

  The main house phone starts to ring in the kitchen. It’s an old thing my dad liked the look of and had rewired, even though we all have individual cell phones. The ring is harsh, cutting through the silence of the house in a way that only emphasizes it.

  Has Grayson called me back on the house number, guessing what has happened to my phone? That must be it. I rush through to the kitchen, knowing that I have to talk to someone about this, or I’m going to burst. I snatch up the handset, cutting off that sharp ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Celestra Caine?”

  A man’s voice. It’s not Grayson. It’s not anyone I know. And yet, whoever he is, he obviously knows me. Coming here and now, I know the call has to have something to do with whatever is going on.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “Celestra Caine, you are about to fade.”

  ******

  FADE (Book 1: FADE Series)

  August 2011

  From Bestselling Author Kailin Gow comes DESIRE

  A Dystopian world where everyone’s future is planned out for them at age 18…whether it is what a person desires or not. Kama is about to turn 18 and she thinks her Life’s Plan will turn out like her boyfriend’s and friend’s – as they desired. But when she glimpse a young man who can communicate with her with his thoughts and knows her name…a young man with burning blue eyes and raven hair, who is dressed like no other in her world, she is left to question her Life’s Plan a
nd her destiny.

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