The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series

by Natalie Wright

  After a few minutes, the shooting began to die down and then stopped entirely. Then, it was perfectly quiet. I dared to open my eyes, risking the break in my concentration, and all around us stood townspeople, the sheriff, his cowboy deputy. All stood totally silent, their mouths open in apparent disbelief. And on the ground around Owen and me, in a nearly perfect circle, were at least a hundred shell casings and spent bullets. Not one of the bullets had penetrated my shield.

  “We don’t want any more trouble,” I shouted out. “We just want to go back to where we belong.”

  “And where would that be?” the sheriff asked.

  “We’re from Earth, but the future Earth.”

  “Them there’s alien creatures,” someone in the crowd said.

  Others chimed in with, “That’s right,” and, “She’s a witch,” and even, “Get back, Johnny, they’re monsters.”

  The sheriff advanced closer and got just outside of my bubble of protection. I wasn’t sure if he could cross over it or if he, too, would be repelled like the bullets had been. I don’t think he knew if he could either.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “I think this one here’s nothing more than a murderer, and this one is using some kind of fancy trick – manipulatin’ our minds – to believe her. You’re no more ’n common criminals.”

  “You’re wrong, sir,” Owen said. “There’s no trick here. We don’t belong in this place or time. We just want to get back. We’ll get out of your hair and leave you in peace.”

  I couldn’t read minds in the Umbra Perdita, but I still had my intuitive senses left to me. I could tell that the sheriff wasn’t going to let it go that easy. He had promised a hangin’, and I don’t think he liked the idea of being shown up by a teenager, let alone a girl. His eyes blazed rage at me.

  I closed my eyes again and concentrated on the field of protection to buy us some time. Owen asked in a whispered voice, “What do we do now?”

  I whispered back, “Try to keep talking to him, Owen, and grab onto me with both hands. I’m going to try to get us back to the others. If you distract them, I should be able to concentrate on getting us back.”

  I slipped again into that place of half there, half somewhere else. The voices around me became like words spoken under water, my eyes closed to the sights of what was going on around me. I was aware of my body, but soon even that seemed to fade to nothingness.

  I had the vague sense that something was hanging on to me, and there was a part of me that was annoyed at it. I wanted to swat it away but resisted the temptation to move as I stood in a very still position, letting my breath guide me.

  My only thought was to go to Fanny. I focused on her face and her laugh. I want to be with Fanny now.

  Then it started to happen – again. The terrible ripping and tearing as I got sucked into the Umbra Perdita transit system. As the sensation came back to my body, sounds once again became distinct. I opened my eyes and caught sight of Draicha, the Dark Man, standing just outside of my bubble of protection. He had a smile on his face.

  I was phase shifting now, and the sights of the town disappeared, but just before it faded entirely, I heard the crack of a gun being fired followed by a loud yell of pain.

  In my twisting and twirling, I tried to reach for Owen, but I couldn’t find him. Did he come with me?

  Not soon enough, the sensation of being pulled like taffy stopped. I landed with a thud on the red dust of the Umbra Perdita, my question about Owen answered too.

  He was lying in a heap at my feet, his hand still gripping my ankle, his eyes closed, his shirt covered in blood.

  18

  We had landed once more in the dusty ground of Ciardha’s demonic playground. Fanny and Greta were still suspended in the air in Ciardha’s electric prison cell. They were alive, but their faces were ghostly white, their eyes wide with fear. Their auras wavered and were full of dark holes. I felt I was almost out of time.

  I bent down to where Owen was lying. The blood was pouring out of him, but from where, I couldn’t at first tell. I pulled up his shirt to see where the bullet had hit him.

  When I got his shirt up past his beltline, my head involuntarily turned away at the sight. I felt the bile rise in my gut. He had taken a bullet in the stomach, and I could see his gut splayed open, blood pouring out.

  “Emily, is he alive?” I heard Fanny yell.

  I checked Owen’s pulse in his neck. It was there – barely.

  “Yes, he’s still alive. But he won’t be for long if I can’t help him.”

  In the Netherworld, wounds had healed on their own. In that place of no time, you’d have to be hacked to pieces fast in order to die.

  The Umbra Perdita apparently had a different set of rules. Our wounds were real, and death was possible. My question at the moment, though, was whether or not my ability to talk to matter would allow me to convince Owen’s arteries to close up, his bleeding to stop.

  I pressed my hands to Owen’s open wound, trying my best not to think about the blood and bits of torn flesh and guts on my hands. I focused on his arteries and veins and pictured them repairing themselves.

  My concentration was broken by Ciardha’s voice.

  “Oh, how sad for you, but how delicious for me! Your suffering grows … oh yes, it grows! You’re thinking you made the wrong choice. Poor Miss Adams, you were too weak to save the one you chose. One has lost his mind, the other bleeds to death at her feet.”

  “Shut up! Shut up, you disgusting bastard of a sick mother …”

  Dorcha emitted a loud hyena-type laugh mixed with a horse whinny while Macha’s high-pitched screech filled the rancid air of the arena.

  “Tsk, tsk. Temper!” baited Macha.

  “Oh, no need to chide her for it, dear Macha. Her temper only makes me stronger! Her suffering makes me grow. Now look at me, Miss Adams. Look at what you’ve created. Why I’m an adult now, thanks to you feeding me.”

  “Emily, ignore him. He’s chiding you so you can’t do what you have to do to save Owen,” Greta said.

  “It’s a little hard to ignore that chode goading me.”

  “You have to try!” Fanny screamed.

  I did my best to ignore Ciardha and Macha’s goading. They both continued to hurl insults at me, provoking me to feel anger and fear. It was so hard to tune them out. It was like his voice was outside of me and inside of me at the same time. his voice was like thunder booming in my chest, a chest already heavy with pain.

  I closed my eyes and kept my hands pressed against Owen’s gunshot wound, and I went back to telling those blood vessels to heal. My hands were warming up, almost to the point of hurting from the heat.

  Please, please, Goddess, if you can hear me, please help me to save Owen. I couldn’t save them both, please, please help to save this one. Please don’t let him die. He was innocent. Ciardha had him in his clutches. Please help me to save Owen.

  To be honest, I still wasn’t sure that the Goddess answered prayers. I wasn’t sure she could hear me. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if she was real. Maybe my time in the Netherworld was just a dream. It was starting to feel like a dream while my time in the Umbra Perdita was all too real. The proof was the warm, sticky blood covering my hands.

  Ever since we’d gotten upchucked back into the arena, Owen hadn’t moved a millimeter. But then I heard him mumble.

  “What … what … where am I?”

  I didn’t take my hands from where they were and tried not to stop thinking about the vessels repairing themselves. But I said to Owen, “Shh, you’re with Emily, in the Umbra Perdita. You’ve been shot. Now lie still while I try to repair you.”

  “Emily?”

  Owen raised his head a bit to look at me. At first, it was like he didn’t recognize me. He blinked, and his eyes had that bleary look that people get when they’re on pain meds. But after a few seconds, his eyes seemed to focus better, and a look of recognition came across his face.

  “Emily,” he said and dropped his head
back to the dusty ground.

  I tried hard to picture the blood vessels and internal organs in my mind, to see what I was working with. But I couldn’t get my receiver to pick anything up. I wasn’t sure that I was helping, but after a few more minutes, it felt like the bleeding had stopped.

  Owen still had a gunshot wound, and he wasn’t perfectly healed, but at least I had gotten the blood to stop gushing out of his body.

  “It hurts,” he whispered.

  “I know,” I said. I put my hand to his face, wiping some of the dust off of it and smoothing his hair.

  “You came for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even after what happened …” Owen coughed. His cough left behind a bit of blood on his lower lip.

  I don’t know if this is working. I kept trying to concentrate on healing him.

  “Shh, just rest.”

  “You’re … you’re all right, Miss Magic.” Owen closed his eyes and relaxed against me.

  I wanted to stay with Owen, to continue to work on him. But I had to go to Jake. I might already be too late.

  “Owen, I have to leave you for a while.”

  Owen tried to sit up, but he winced in pain. “Please. Please don’t leave me,” he said as he reached for my hand.

  “I’m so sorry, Owen,” I said as I grabbed his hand and held it to my cheek. “I went there to save you. I did the best I could.”

  “I know you did.”

  “But to go to you, I had to make a choice, and now Jake is – Jake may be lost to us now. But I have to go to him, Owen. I have to try. I’m sorry I have to leave you like this, but I have to try.”

  “I understand,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I wish I remembered kissing you.”

  Tears that were just welling in my eyes now spilled over my lids.

  “You do? Why?”

  “Because I think it would be … really nice.”

  I bent down to where his head lay on my lap, his eyes open but glassy. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t sure if Owen was going to live or die. I wasn’t sure if I could save Jake. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I wanted to kiss Owen Breen one more time. This time, for real. This time, without tricks or pretense.

  I gently lifted his upper body into my arms, his head resting on my arm, my other hand gently stroking his hair. I leaned down and kissed him softly, my own salty tears mingled with Owen’s tears on his cheek.

  “That was nice,” he said.

  I just smiled at him, hoping like anything that I could find a way to get Owen – to get all of us – the hell out of this place.

  When we came to the Umbra Perdita, Owen was not much more to me than a fantasy, a dream that I wanted to have while I was awake. But I didn’t really know anything about Owen. All I knew was that he was super hot, had smoldering eyes that could pierce right through you, and that he could charm a girl into doing just about anything he wanted her to. All I knew was he was the most wanted guy in the school and that if he chose me, maybe I’d no longer be just Freak Girl.

  I realized as I looked in his deep brown eyes, now glazed over with pain and at risk of fading into a coma or death, that I didn’t’ know much about the guy behind the eyes. As I sat there looking into those eyes, I realized I wasn’t in love with Owen. I was in love with the idea of Owen. And I felt horrible that I had tried to use him to get what I wanted. Owen may have charmed me falsely, but he was under a spell. What was my excuse?

  Please let him live. I wanted to get to know the real Owen. Maybe if we got out of this place, we could get to know each other. Maybe even become friends. Please let him live. He deserved to live out the life he wanted, to go to college, play football, have adventures and meet someone who loved him for him, not for his status.

  “Good-bye, Miss Magic,” Owen whispered.

  “I’ll be back – soon – okay? You stay here and rest and try to heal.”

  “Good-bye, Emily,” he said and closed his eyes.

  I held him and talked to him, but there was no response. I felt for a pulse in his neck. Nothing.

  He was gone. I sat in the rusty dust of Hell and held the dead body of the boy who had given me my first kiss. That’s when I knew for sure that the Umbra Perdita was real and not a terrible dream. I was covered in real blood from the real Owen Breen, who was really dead.

  19

  “Emily, what’s going on?” Fanny asked.

  I couldn’t answer. The tears welling in my eyes caused my throat to close. When I finally got a sound to come out, it was a yell loud enough to vie with Ciardha’s bellowing.

  “Nooooooo!”

  I rocked his lifeless body in my arms, his face now wholly covered with my salty tears. As I held Owen, the warmth draining quickly from his lifeless form, a rage welled in me. A white-hot fury engulfed me.

  I wanted to kill Ciardha. I’d never had murderous thoughts before. In the Netherworld, I had struggled with the idea of bringing death to someone. But holding Owen’s body in my arms and knowing what had happened to Jake, my anger swelled to epic proportions, my desire to hurt that monster at a fever pitch.

  I gently laid Owen’s body on the ground and stood, facing Ciardha.

  “I’m going to kill you, you sorry son of a bitch,” I said through gritted teeth. I flew across the arena to where Ciardha sat, lording it over the ‘game’ he had created.

  Ciardha and Macha sniggered, filling the stadium with his thunderous laughter and her annoying, shrill screeching. Dorcha let out her hyena laugh, and the sound only added fuel to my fire.

  I pulled my dagger from its sheath while I was still in mid-air and hurled it at Ciardha, aiming for his heart, if he had one. I whispered to the dagger with my mind, Kill Ciardha. Be a dagger swift and true. I wanted Ciardha to pay for what he had done. I wanted revenge.

  The dagger landed true and struck Ciardha just where his heart should be. He looked down, and his face registered no more than annoyance as he pulled the dagger from his chest. But no blood poured from a wound, no crimson stained his shirt. He was totally unharmed.

  Macha’s screech rose to an even higher ear-piercing pitch. “Ohhh, she is entertaining, Master. Please, please let’s continue this game.”

  “Shut up, you little pixie bitch! I’m coming for you next.”

  Macha only laughed at me louder.

  “You insipid fool of a girl. You can’t kill a god! Your worthless hunk of metal is of no consequence to me,” he said as he flung the dagger at me. It landed at my feet. When I picked it up, I could tell right away that something was wrong.

  The Sight Stone at the top of the dagger was totally cloudy, not clear with the brilliance of its magic. The jewels that had encrusted it were turned to ordinary rocks and stones. The dagger itself looked beaten up, weathered and worn. I could tell by looking at it that it had changed. And when I picked it up, I knew that its magic had been lost. It was no more than a useless hunk of steel.

  The conversation I’d had with Hindergog all those months ago flooded my brain.

  “But know this, Youngling. If the holder of the dagger ever seeks to use it for their own selfish ends – instead of for the highest good of all – then it will cease to have any magical powers at all. It will become a useless hunk of metal.”

  “So basically use it for good, not evil. Got it.”

  “It’s more than use it for good, Miss Emily. Do not use it for your own selfish purpose. That is the key.”

  I guess trying to kill Ciardha in a rage to take my revenge counts as using it for my own selfish purpose. The thing that had gotten me through the attacks in the arena and saved Owen from being hanged was dead to me now. I was more alone than ever; more powerless than ever to save my friends and get us home. One more costly mistake. A mistake I was powerless to repair.

  “Pitiable Miss Adams, lost your little plaything. Tsk, tsk. She broke the rules, and now she’s lost her toy as a punishment.”

  “What do you know of the rules?”

/>   “Oh, I know a lot about how my sister and her minions operate.”

  “Hindergog is not a minion!”

  “So defensive! So delicious,” he said.

  “Emily, get a grip on yourself. You’re only making things worse,” Greta yelled at me. The last thing I needed was a lecture from Greta.

  “Shut up, okay! Stop squawking at me from your cage and telling me what to do. I’m doing the best I can, here!”

  “Well then, it’s not terribly good. You’ve ruined Jake and killed Owen. And we’ll be next unless you pull yourself together,” she squealed.

  “Shut up! Shut up right now. This isn’t all my fault. I didn’t know that Jake would be …”

  “It is your fault,” Fanny screamed.

  “Fanny. How can you side with her?”

  “I’m not siding with anybody. I’m telling it like it is, which is what I always do. And the truth is, you made a dumb-ass choice to come here, and then you pulled us all in here with you so you could get on the ins with Owen. And now Owen’s dead, and Jake is as good as.”

  “Fanny …” I said as hot tears again covered my face. “I can’t believe you – of all people – would turn against me.”

  “I’ve had it with you. I’m done saving your ass. I’m done with your bullshit. If we ever get out of here, I’m never speaking to you again!”

  Fanny’s words brought me to my knees. In that moment, I just wanted Ciardha to strike me down with one of his electricity jolts or something. I wanted to be put down like a dog, put out of my misery, a compassionate end to my suffering. But I knew, even in my grief, that’s what Ciardha wanted. And I knew that even though I didn’t want to admit it, Greta was right. The more angry I got – the more I wallowed in grief – the stronger Ciardha became.

  I took a deep breath of the acrid air, the burning stench filling my lungs, and I concentrated on finding Jake. I had already wasted too much time, already burned precious opportunity to bring him back whole.

  “What are you doing?” Greta snarked. “Doing your little Buddha meditation act won’t make us stop hating you.”