“No.” Acaw’s crow-brother gave a loud squawk, and the elf’s eyes held mine. “The queen’s body vanished.”
***
Chapter Six
So, Bren hadn’t been lying about trouble in the Sanctuary, at least, despite the fact he was a rotten, filthy liar in every other way.
Even in spirit-form, my teeth felt clenched and my stomach ached. I couldn’t believe he had betrayed me. I couldn’t believe he had cheated like that!
I hoped he enjoyed being a rotten-smelling flower. The pain where my heart should be grew more fierce, then changed to the rapid beat of fear as I examined the sights below me.
Something strange and terrible had happened on the Path. Through the noise in my mind and heart, I could hear the wrongness of the silence below me.
In my favorite and most comfortable patrolling form, the hawk, I soared over 1965 New York and I knew all life had been stripped from the sad, quiet artisan’s village. Not driven out or snuffed like a torch, but consumed, all but the slightest trace of life essence. That remnant essence of witches still flickered like so many fireflies.
No bodies.
No blood.
No mayhem.
The witches were simply gone.
Only a single ribbon of silvery power remained, stretching toward New York City. That magical signature had to belong to the rescued boy Bren had mentioned. Perhaps that silver was just gold mingled with Bren’s abilities, given that silver wasn’t a normal witching color. Bren had quite recently followed the boy’s trail. Already the ribbon was fading, since the one who made it had shifted to another time.
As I opened my senses to understand more, the energy clinging to the Sanctuary set my belly to roiling. Such darkness and rage—but not the foul, rotten flavor of Nire’s magic. The witches in 1965 New York hadn’t been turned to Shadows. Of course not. Shadows, I could have dealt with, now that I had conquered Alderon, taken his sword as my own, and become the Shadow Queen.
No, the New York witches hadn’t been turned into anything at all. For all I could tell, something might have murdered them and eaten them whole. But what? And why?
I flew lower, and my spirit-ears detected faint singing. The hopeful, lovely sound made a complete contrast with the town’s quiet devastation. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all, seemingly drifting out of the ground. I clicked my beak. The 1965 Sanctuary had been constructed on ancient earth, for certain, one of the sites where the veil between planes of existence remained very thin. Of course, the ancient races were gone now, and much of that ancient magic with them. Yet, could some archaic spell have lingered, waiting for an unknown trigger?
As I closed in on one of the cabins, intending to land in an open window to look around, search for spells, and see what I could make of that music, the house in question flickered.
It began to vanish. I tried to brake my descent, but I was moving too fast. I was too close.
Flapping like a mad thing, I tried to pull up. But something drove me down, pulled me down. In, out, above, below—I felt its drag upon my spirit form.
I tumbled directly into the fading structure, and—
I’m nowhere…
Not falling…
Not perching…
Drifting…
For a moment, I remained aware of the spell that lured and captured my essence like a Venus flytrap tempts and swallows a fly. Then I knew only colors and warm, gentle winds. I was flying over a great and endless meadow, watching people frolic below me. Some danced. Some hugged each other, and still more met men and women in shimmering white robes. The white-robed people shone with the radiance of the sun itself, without being painful. I wanted nothing more than to go to one of them and embrace that beauty. I wanted to follow wherever they led me.
As I touched down in that summer field, I felt my body come to me as if I had brought it all along.
Fascinating. That had never happened before. My real body. With me, when I had been traveling in only spirit form.
I supposed I was no longer in my spirit form, but actually standing there, whole, spirit and flesh combined.
One of the large, white-robed women came toward me, beaming.
Strange, but she looked like my mother’s sister, only Aunt Emmaline had been dead for many years. Well, centuries, if you factored in the time period of the Sanctuary where she had lived and died. My thoughts drifted through the meadow as I gazed at the happy people. Most were wearing tie-dyed shirts and embroidered jeans. Everyone had flowers in their hair except a few, who had no hair at all.
“Jasmina!” Aunt Emmaline cried. After waving, she bustled over to me and grabbed me into a hug. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon, but you look wonderful, dear.”
“Thanks.” The back of my mind nudged the front of my mind, like I should say more. “You look wonderful, too.”
And she did. Her dark hair crowned her in stacked braids, and her dark eyes twinkled in the brilliant light of her robes.
“Funny. I remembered her eyes being blue,” I said to no one in particular. My hands tingled. When I looked down, they were missing.
“Oh, dear, we can’t have that.” Aunt Emmaline touched both of my arms. I felt a slight jolt, and my hands came back. “Acceptance is a hard thing, isn’t it, Jasmina? You’re awfully young to be dead.”
“My boyfriend’s a corpse flower, but he’s not dead,” I said with a sigh, watching flowers grow all around me. “I’m not dead either.”
“But of course you are.” Her smile gleamed in the sunlight of her robes and her blue eyes sparkled. “This is the entrance to Summerland. Come on with me to the next meadow. I’ll take you to your father!”
Had her eyes been blue a second ago?
I thought not.
And why did her hair look reddish brown now instead of black? My legs tingled and vanished. Aunt Emmaline squealed and grabbed at the air where my knees had been.
Once more, I felt a jolt, and my legs came back. For the briefest second, I felt a hand on my ankle, and I could have sworn I heard Bren cursing. But how could Bren curse? He was a plant. Though I couldn’t quite remember why.
“My father’s a peacock,” I told Aunt Emmaline, remembering my encounters with a spirit guide in death’s haven—an arrogant blue bird named Egidus, who turned out to be my father. “And I don’t think he’s in any meadow.”
This information made Aunt Emmaline’s hair get redder. Her eyes got redder, too, and her robes dimmed a notch. “Your father has been dead for years. He isn’t a peacock.”
“Yes, he is.” My thoughts focused faster and easier now. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t the entrance to Summerland. I’d been dead before, and this place wasn’t death.
Yet … death was here. Somewhere close. My skin crawled.
All around me, people joined hands with their white-robed companions and headed out of the flowered meadow. I didn’t want them to go. I thought about yelling to them, but my throat felt paralyzed.
My witch senses, coming back to me the longer I concentrated, picked up golden flecks of energy around the people, and I knew them for witches, too. When I took a look at the “meadow” they were heading into, my heart nearly froze in my chest.
Darkness. They were headed to absolute empty darkness.
As black as the Glorieuse, a stone gate at the top of a mountain—a gate that marked a border between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Swallowing to force my throat into action, I murmured, “Death.”
My heart thundered against my ribs.
“You aren’t dead,” I said a little louder, hoping some might hear me. “Wait! You won’t be dead unless you cross over!”
By the Goddess! They were still walking!
Digging my nails into my palm, letting the pain sharpen my focus, I drew on my magic. To my great relief, power answered me readily.
I magnified my voice and cried, “Halt!”
Breezes stopped. The witches froze where they were,
though the white-robed guides did not. They turned on me, obviously slowed by my spell, but not immobilized. Some swore loudly. Others took hold of witches and started to drag them toward death.
I roared my frustration, then wrapped them all with a shimmering bond of my magic. The guides screeched and tried to escape, but they couldn’t—at least not yet.
Aunt Emmaline moved. She threw off my attempt to bind her all too easily.
A sudden onslaught of pressure made my head ache.
“My dear,” Aunt Emmaline said calmly, though her voice trembled. “Those witches are passing on. Don’t interfere with their journeys. These are their spirit guides, and—”
My eyes narrowed. I shoved back against the pressure in my mind.
The more I focused, the shorter Aunt Emmaline got. “You’re not dead,” I snapped as I grabbed her by the robes. “If you had died, you’d know what spirit guides look like—and it’s not white-robed shapeshifters!”
Aunt Emmaline thrashed in my grasp. The shoving force on my mind doubled and tripled. It pushed. I pushed back.
“Reveal,” I commanded through clenched teeth.
Writhing and swearing, fighting my magic but obviously too tired to win against me for the moment, my Aunt Emmaline changed into what looked like a hairy five-year-old child with pointed teeth.
The Erlking!
“Contain,” I commanded, but my bonds slipped uselessly around him. “Contain! Contain!”
The Erlking sank his hideous incisors deep into my wrist. White-hot pain lanced up my arm. It flowed through my body and ignited the pain in my old Shadow wound.
“Contain!” Tears flowed down my face. He wriggled out of each bond I set. I tried to hold him and force him to turn loose my wrist at the same time. The freak hung on like a spelled piranha.
Blood flowed down my tormented hand and arm. The stench of copper made my head spin as bolts of fire seemed to rise from each of his hateful teeth. The biting beast started to laugh deep in his throat as he drank. Golden silver tendrils of my magic rose between us. With a wave of revulsion, I realized he was drinking my magical essence.
Cursing, then speaking and working every spell I could think of, I fought him.
He held on.
My magic began to slip. The witches! No! If my concentration faltered the Erlking’s minions would drag them into death.
I kicked his legs and beat him about the shoulders. He kept drinking. My arm tingled—and vanished along with the Erlking’s head. This time I was sure I heard Bren shouting.
“Help me!” I cried. “Somebody help!”
The Erlking gave a mighty twitch and his head reappeared. My arm did not, but it still hurt.
I grabbed for the little wretch with my free hand, but caught nothing as he turned and bolted across the meadow. Golden arrows flew out of thin air beside me, aimed straight at the fleeing monster. Rol’s arrows.
A sword also glimmered in the air—my sword, gripped in my hand, attached to my now-bandaged but blood-soaked arm, which reappeared in a sudden rush of hot aching and silver sparks.
One of Rol’s magical arrows struck the little red beast in the leg. An eerie shrill cry rose from his retreating form, and spells cracked and exploded all around me. The Glorieuse—black darkness snapped shut, emitting a blaze of silver magic. White-robed “guides” became gauzy-clad enchantresses. They hissed and broke out of my magical bonds as the flowered meadow shrank to nothing but a dirt road. Witches fell to their knees and started to weep and scream.
“Nire comes!” one of the enchantresses screamed. “Soon. Soon you’ll all be Shadows!”
Wielding my sword, I charged after the Erlking and his wicked daughters. Blood trickled from the bandages and down my upraised arm. Those enchantress-demons had picked up their wounded father, and they ran faster than any creature should be able to run. I spelled myself for speed, and I couldn’t keep up at all. Even as I shot spells at them, the cruel women outdistanced me and faded from my view, taking the villain with them.
Cursing almost as well as Bren, I gave up the chase. When I finally came to full stop and turned back toward the witches, I realized where we were.
The village of 1965 New York’s Sanctuary.
I felt like I had been running forever, but in truth, I had traveled only a few yards. The Erlking and his daughters must have used oldeFolke illusion magic to convince me otherwise, and more dark energy to draw my physical body to my trapped spirit essence. Then, somehow, the monster had opened a gate between life and death. More than that, he had convinced a number of vibrant, living witches to walk through it! Some had been hesitant—or were they deliberately delayed to draw me into the trap?
Curse him. He knew he didn’t have the power to kill Bren or me outright, so he used innocents to trap us. He would have killed them all.
As I stood seething, groups of witches crawled toward me, sobbing. Some sat down. Others came closer, closer, hands outstretched.
“Help us,” one witch pleaded, her voice tremulous.
“Yes, please,” begged another. “Save us.”
I stared at them, my stomach twisting. This felt so like the dark days when Nire menaced the Path.
That thought chilled me, and my teeth were already chattering. Odd, since the sun was so bright. My arm burned and throbbed. Blood surged from my arm and out on the dusty road through the bandage Bren—or someone—had applied.
“Your Majesty,” another witch whispered, closer, touching my ankle-or was she shouting and grabbing?
I felt so dizzy. Pulling my arm against my body, I rubbed the old Shadow wound on my arm and tried to keep my wits. “Bren,” I whispered, then remembered he didn’t love me and started to cry despite the many witches around me who needed comfort and reassurance. I needed to take them to the Path, back to L.O.S.T., until we could figure out how to make this Sanctuary safe from the Erlking.
“Come with me,” I tried to say, tried to turn toward the Path to lead them to safety, but I was falling, hitting the ground even though I didn’t feel it, and—
Nowhere…
Nowhere…
Drifting … Was I back in spirit form?
But no. I was walking a circle bordered with tall sculpted hedges.
A forest?
The Sanctuary was gone.
The witches were gone.
Yes. This was definitely some sort of forest, very manicured, but with vines and tangled undergrowth. Why didn’t I smell the loam and evergreen common to most woods? And on my skin, I had no sense of breezes or temperature.
Moonlight shone through the canopies of tall trees. I turned left, then right in the semi-darkness. From somewhere came the sound of children crying. Poor, lost things. Why couldn’t I ever find them?
“Hello? Where are you?” I tried to walk through the hedge to reach the sound, but the branches fought me. Too thick and strong.
“Be quiet,” someone hissed. A male voice that sounded familiar.
“Bren?”
No answer, save quiet sniffling.
It was Todd. It had to be Todd. Where was he?
I dug at the hedge. Not again. This time, I would make things different. Dream, vision, illusion, or fantasy, I would change the frustrating search from a failure to a success.
Drawing on my magic, I burned my way through the stubborn hedge, and found myself face to face with Todd, only he was so thin and so pale I almost didn’t recognize him. Sickly reddish bands of magic covered him, binding his power, yet he moved in spite of the terrible ropes. Staggering, growling, he spread out his arms to shield what stood behind him, but I had already seen what he was trying to protect.
Children.
Five little boys, equally bound by red magical bonds, sobbing quietly in the dark night. “Where are we?” I asked Todd, breathless with the joy of his appearance, even in such poor shape.
Todd’s response was nothing the children behind him should have heard. A stone hanging about his neck, a sharply cut bloodstone, glowed.
I flinched. “But if you tell me where we are, Bren and I can save you!”
“Drop dead,” he snarled. “I know this drill. I bite, you start pretending to rescue us, then you change back and laugh while you beat us. Not this time. You aren’t fooling me again, you overgrown excuse for a bloodsucking tick.”
“Todd. I’m not the Erlking. I’m not trying to torture you or fool you. Now, tell me where we are.”
For a moment, his eyes widened in the moonlight, even looked a little hopeful. Then they narrowed again, to tiny slits that glittered in the darkness. His expression told me he was past trusting anything save his own wits and the children he so jealously guarded. At that moment, he looked so much like Bren had once looked, wounded and cornered, that my heart set up a fierce ache.
“Let me help you,” I pleaded.
Todd gave a feral shriek and fell toward me. Even though he was bound with those red ropes, he twisted and hit me hard with his elbow. When he struck me, I fell backward, landing so hard it knocked the breath from me.
Then suddenly I was flying upward.
Back I sailed, and back, and back, then down, dropping like a stone. I felt like a hawk plummeting toward prey. When I struck the ground, would I die?
No more death. No! Please. I can’t go back to death’s haven.
Yet I fell. And screamed. My arm throbbed. My chest ached.
Where was the ground?
The moonlight—gone. Only darkness. Only nothing.
“… Shouldn’t have touched her while she was patrolling in spirit form.” Mother’s voice, tight and angry. “Yes, I realize her body parts were appearing and disappearing. No! I don’t want to talk to him. Get him out!”
I tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t.
Gnarled fingers grabbed my aching wrist and chanted healing spells.
Nothingness claimed me again.
Sometime later, I didn’t know how much later, I woke again.
“Wake up and smile at me.” Bren’s voice. A hand stroked my head. “I’m not mad about the stinky plant thing.”
Once more, I did what I could to move, to speak—but nothingness won all too easily.
The next thing I knew, people were shouting. I thought it might be my mother and Bren’s father, something about anteaters and harpy women and breaking up. More shouting intruded. Bren, ordering them out of the room. Then Sherise and Bren shouting about that kiss that did and did not happen. And Rol and some hags, insisting that the boy had to stay with Rol, no matter what.
L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set Page 54