by S. M. Beiko
“You will come in one piece or many.” Corgan finally yanked the arm free, and it retracted, almost going inside its body, like it was winding up for another strike. “Master did not specify his preference.”
I slid along the rock face. Wind whistled through the grate at my back. I didn’t dare turn my head to judge the distance. It was far. I’d have to be fast. Corgan was faster. But if I beat him, I could get out. I could run. Where? To who? Shut up, brain. You’re not the voice I need right now.
Roan.
A whisper. Faint. The last words of several dying someones. Or just one. I squeezed my eyes shut, ground my teeth. “Please.” Was that a spark? “Please.” I was struggling to flick a lighter to life around its child safety lock, finger bleeding for the effort —
When I opened my eyes again, the cabled arm had let loose like a cannon, and in seconds it would be inside my skull.
But it stopped.
I looked down. I had stopped it. Caught it, in fact; my fingers crushing it in my grip, which was clawed, furred, the arm of Deon. But something was wrong. I felt the transformation take hold, but I was still so cold. And the Opal was quiet.
And my fire was black.
“No —” But I felt myself growing, huge, taking up the pit and now towering over the Corgan-beast, which snarled through its croggled jaw. I felt my fist clamp down hard, heard the guttural scream of the creature as I snapped the arm into splinters. It crumpled to the ground, howling.
No, stop! Now I was trapped inside myself, helpless as I went after the miserable wretch and couldn’t control what my body was doing. I picked Corgan up and smashed it into the rocks like it was a toy. I saw the dark flames licking off it, licking off me, and the sick feeling inside took hold, the dark fire climbing. Where was the bright and burning flare, the god-fire that rose of its own accord, the familiar, basking warmth?
Where was I?
Roan, the voice whispered. Teasing, mocking. This is what you wanted, Roan. You wanted the power.
No, I screamed back, pulling the great demon up from the ground, slamming it into the ceiling of the cavern above me. Who are you? Get out of my head!
Push me out, it dared, as if it were the easiest thing to do. Go ahead.
I felt the demon going limp in my hands. It was over. Not yet, the shadow whispered, and the hands, my hands, tightened, bringing the body down carefully and laying it over the rocks in the scant beam of light as I stood back.
It was bleeding, if you could call it that. Dark fluid oozed from the wounds in its head. It cowered, pitiful now. It was only a servant, a lowly prison guard. Even if it was a monster, all I’d wanted was to get out of here.
I felt my nine tails rise, pointing upward like spikes, and I reached behind me — reached for the slate hilt of my blade, and in front of me the empty hilt shuddered, as if in pain.
The black fire consumed it, slow and deliberate. When it peeled back, it revealed only a blade of black, cruel glass, and in it I saw my reflection.
It was not the fox warrior aspect that mirrored Deon. My face was covered in a mask of blood-stained bone, a corroded skull that was a cruel imitation of a fox’s head.
I took the blade in both hands and looked at Corgan. It cradled its snapped arm, shivering.
The corrupted blade was hungry. I could feel its need stabbing into my arm. Could see only moments ahead when the blade hacked into the creature grovelling before me, separating it into bloody black pieces.
Do it now, coaxed the voice, as if it was comforting me.
The blade wheeled back and arced down —
— but did not connect.
“No,” I said, feeling my blood burn, fighting back for control of my own body. The blade flickered, the black fire giving way to spitting, bright sparks.
DO IT NOW. The voice was a roar, and I threw the blade aside like it was a snapping venomous snake.
I took a step back. It took everything in me, until I was stepping over the mangled creature, my head pushing through the grate it had left open. I shouldered my heavy god-body through and into a wide space, could feel myself being lost again as the dark thing at the back of my mind fought for purchase there.
But I held my ground, and soon the dark fox warrior melted away, the black flames pulling back like cracked lips, as I went down deep and untangled the knots choking the heart of me, one by one.
I let out a gasp, and I was myself again.
“Don’t worry,” someone at the far end of the space said, not unkindly. “We’ve plenty of time to work on that.”
The room was utterly dark, but then a great flame at the end of it roared to life, split in two, and shot across each wall flanking me, lighting torches on their way before sizzling out.
At the end of the room stood Killian, and with each lit torch, the Cinder-Plagued children peeled from the shadows. Beside Killian stood Saskia, eyes on the ground, holding herself tightly.
I got to my feet, but god did I ever want to collapse.
“I didna ken what I was expecting, girlie. But it wasna that.”
The children moved closer, but when I backed up, they stopped. Weird. They weren’t going to fight me. Not yet.
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Killian’s bright face fell, hazel eyes flashing in the shadows as he drew closer. “I’ve helped ye. Can ye not see that?” He levelled a finger to my chest. “That bloody thing. It wants to own ye. To destroy ye. But I silenced it. All those angry voices of the dead, envious of yer beating heart. I put them down.”
Gone was the man who had become my friend, who I thought had saved my life. Those gleaming eyes burned at the rims. Yet still he looked as human or Denizen as any other.
“Urka put something inside me,” I spat back. “Inside the stone.” I put my fingers around it, pressing tight, wishing I could turn it back to how it was, however unpredictable it had been. It hadn’t made me the thing in the pit. It had been a force for good.
Killian’s smile was pitying. “Can’t ye see? The stone has been neutralized. Whatever comes out now . . . that’s all you.”
I felt my heart cratering. The stone was still so cold. I was so cold. I know what I was, what I had been, even before the stone. And this dark thing hadn’t won. I had called back the fire to me, somehow, from some deep corner at the last . . . that had been me, not the skull fox warrior . . .
“Master . . .”
I spun, and out of the hole behind me squirmed what was left of Corgan.
“Ah, there ye are, wretch,” Killian sighed, and suddenly he had moved around me, hands behind his back in consideration. “Ye look a bit worse for wear.”
The creature bowed its head. “Please, Master. I beg you to kill me. I have failed you.”
Killian held up his hand. “Enough of that. I will show ye mercy, same as my daughter has.”
That word was a blow in itself, and I staggered as far away from him as I could get. Something was about to happen, and I looked frantically about the room, meeting only the slackened faces of Killian’s infected slaves. I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t blast myself one, either. My eyes met Saskia’s, and she shook her head, desperately, and she pointed.
I looked back at Killian. But he was changing, too.
His fire consumed him, then became black, like the rest of him. As it peeled away in dark tendrils, it revealed skin of ash-grey, crackled like scales with the same brimstone glow I’d seen in the children, only now it was intense. He grew tall, and the Emerald on his shoulder pulsed, and I could see from here the dark tinges that corrupted the gem’s surface. The ground piked under Corgan and lifted the creature up, assisting it to stand before its master.
Killian bowed his head, and when he lifted it, his eyes were covered in a protruding shard of bone, like a mask. The same kind I’d only just seen in my own reflection.
“I place my name on yours,” Killian said, though the voice was smooth, accentless, the voice of a viper. “Take power from me and become whole again. Fulfill your dark purpose. Rise.” All the breaks in Corgan began healing, stone from the ground shunting into wounds and becoming one with the creature’s body, until it stood on its own and bowed its distorted neck.
“Seela,” it whispered in reverence. “First Child of the Bloodlands. You do me an honour I do not deserve.”
I couldn’t help myself and scoffed openly.
Killian — Seela — turned towards me. Slowly. A perfect curve. I saw him fully now: almost seven feet tall, swathed in a robe of ever-changing black, tentacles of living ink curling, seeping. A cloak of oil.
No eyes. Just the mouth, a thin line cut with a knife, crimson. He opened his hands in humble petition. “You doubt my provenance, daughter?”
“Call me that one more time,” I spat.
“More’s the pity.” Seela folded his hands at his elongated waist. He looked like a stretched larva. “You have trouble accepting what is before you. What I am. What you are. Your blood is my blood.”
“Shut up!” I shouted back. “Last time I checked, my blood is Fox. I dunno what yours is, but there’s none of it in me.” Biology be damned. I clung to Cecelia’s memory, to Ravenna’s. Their strength had been mine. It had been enough.
“True,” Seela conceded. “But you saw it yourself, I think.” He took a step towards me, and I stumbled back. “Can’t you see? I have done this all for you.”
He spread his hands again, gesturing around the room and at the dead floating in the torchlight.
I was stunned. “For me?”
However evil the thing was before me, its tone was earnest. “I could have done to you what I did to the Rabbit Paramount. Corgan was not always as he is. But once he gave me the Emerald, he submitted to me. He understood what lies ahead.” The hulking monster servant drew to Seela’s side, and I couldn’t connect what he was saying to what I saw.
“That . . .” I pointed to Corgan, “is the Rabbit Paramount?”
“No longer,” Seela said, patting the stone. “But Corgan is much more than that now. He is the future. So are my children. And the trees we make together. We are building a new world. I want you to be a part of that willingly. I want you to make the choice yourself.”
I laughed, deeply and loudly and deliberately.
Seela’s jaw clenched.
“You should have killed me,” I seethed. “I’ll never help you.”
Seela came closer — not on two legs but many. A spider’s legs made of that sick, slick ink sluicing out from under his fathomless cloak.
“You are no good to me dead,” he admonished. “The Conclave of Fire would have killed you and cast you aside for that rock you carry. But you are of my blood. And we have been touched by burning shadow. That blood must not be wasted.” His body bent at an impossible angle, pushing his face into mine and a long, terrible claw tapped at the dormant Opal in my sternum. “I will free you from your demon, whose name is Deon. I will show you that breaking the stones will free not only you but this world.”
He drew away, stalking back down the hall. “We have much work to do, but our works will be great.” Then the black flames licked back up his body, to the crown of his head, and he was Killian again. Charming and handsome, pestilence hiding in a human skin suit.
“The second I see the opportunity,” I snapped back, no longer bothering to hide my disgust, “I am going to destroy you.”
Killian smiled. “Ye can try, girlie. But we have too much on our plate to stop now.” Killian’s eyes flicked, and my arms were roughly snatched and held in place by Corgan’s powerful, creaking limbs.
“Take her to the summoning chamber. See that she is fed. We will be moving again shortly to London. To test a theory.” Killian looked straight at me, his hazel eyes a match for the one I had that wasn’t touched by the Moth Queen. And the thought made me sick. “The game may have changed, but our purpose is the same.”
Flames rose off his skin, until he was consumed by them. In the great light he cast, an enormous shadow appeared on the wall behind him, climbing. But it wasn’t his own shadow — it was three. The shadows of his parents, the darklings that started all of this. They were alive, writhing, and I swear I could hear their cries of agony in my head. Impatience. Fury. And yet beyond that, a growing excitement at their impending freedom. As the room filled with the inhuman bellows and ululations, the children had turned towards the ghastly shadow puppet show, their faces raw with longing. The longing of real children for their parents. I’d felt it well.
Killian smiled at me from the pyre of his body. The shadows fused together as one black column, growing and growing, consuming the torchlight.
“Welcome to the family,” he said, before I was dragged away.
Come to Roost
It was still dark when Eli came to, rising to the surface of wakefulness like ballast. No bolting upright, no feeling of falling eternally. No voices screaming at him, invading his senses. Comfort was a strange and foreign sensation. He found himself welcoming it.
He woke, blinked. Enough rest. He needed to find out what was happening. Crossing great distances and speaking with Roan in dreams was one thing, but there were too many holes, and too much had happened since he had let the plane crash. Since he had let everyone in that grove down.
Eli pulled himself carefully and painfully into the linen service uniform someone had left out for him, neatly folded on the rolling cart that also held the monitors from which he now unplugged himself. A few months ago, he would have been insulted at wearing another Family’s colours. But being rendered barely able to do up his own buttons realigned his priorities. Especially the kind he didn’t know if he felt anymore.
But the stone had saved him. Eli never guessed that he would one day be glad for the Moonstone and the space it took up in his heart, in his mind. Or that he’d managed to hold on to it, and himself, this long. He brushed his fingers over it and it felt warm, like it had been touched by fire.
Maybe it had.
His mind flickered back to the dream, where he swore he was back in that miserable worm pit in the Bloodlands, Roan Harken chained arm-to-arm alongside him. But while it was a memory, something that had already happened, it had felt like the present. Felt too real to discount. He could’ve been looking into a mirror — her mismatched eyes holding the terror he recognized too well. Of knowing that the fate she’d blindly chosen was no longer one over which she had any control.
But something else was growing there. He could feel it. Something dark. Where was she that she was trapped in dreams or moving sideways through time and memory? Were the stones communicating, and was she calling for help?
“You’re awake sooner than they predicted.”
It took Eli much too long to turn, to take in Barton at the doorway. His mind was also playing catch-up at a devastating snail’s pace, barely able to read his thoughts before seeing him. So this is what it must feel like to be human . . .
“I’m not one to keep people waiting.” Eli tucked the shirt into the pants, yet even touching his own skin seemed to hurt. “I spent most of my time in that tree asleep, anyway.”
The Owl Council must have come to check on him and gone, once Eli was found to be stable. However weak and vulnerable he’d been, keeping up a defense around his deeper thoughts was automatic, probably aided by the stone. If they’d tried to look into his mind, they wouldn’t have found much. Which was just as well — Eli was still trying to decide whether to tell them all the things the Moonstone had shown him. The warning from the Moth Queen. The visitations with Roan.
Barton came fully into the room, and Eli realized he was standing — walking, in fact, and he took in the running bla
des with open curiosity. “I see you’ve upgraded.”
Barton eased onto the empty bed across from Eli. “I figured there’d be another horrifying adventure just around the corner, so. Wanted to be prepared.”
Eli raised an eyebrow, sending his mind out, feeling around, trying not to make it too obvious. Barton was an incredibly open book, which made it far too easy. Too trusting.
“Thank you,” Eli forced himself to say, recoiling from the latent sensations that pinged back from Barton; he’d felt, just now, his momentary experience inside his own divisive tree. “For the record, when you pulled me out of that thing, I was dead.”
“But you’re not now.” Barton pointed to Eli’s chest. “You probably have that thing to thank.”
Eli chilled noticeably. “There’s little I’ll thank this thing for. Though you’re probably right . . .”
Barton nodded, though Eli knew he didn’t really understand. Never would. And that was fine, because at least he had Roan to . . .
He slammed that thought away, taking a precursory look at the door to the infirmary, which was little more than a workroom, old computers and boxes crammed in the corner between the monitors and beds. The Council could be waiting outside for all he knew, and he threw out a searching mental beacon.
He jolted. “Solomon?” Eli turned back to Barton, who shrugged affably.
“He was almost as far gone as you. Maybe a bit more stubborn, though. He’s up now, speaking to the Council.”
Relief struck Eli like a wave so hard that he didn’t realize, at first, what the pinprick sensation in his eyes was.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He turned his face away. “And the others? From the grove?”
Barton was quiet.
“I should have expected that, too. You . . . did your best.” Eli got up, pouring himself a cup of water from the plastic decanter on the rolling cart. He nodded to himself, sifting through Barton’s thoughts, the things they knew so far. “I see.”