Trystan made a strangled noise but Eleanor knew she had him because he took a step forward, doubtful but pliant. She tugged the skeins of power connecting them.
“Don’t!” the mage shrieked, who reached toward Arwen but the dwarf–the All bless his souls–gripped the black girl’s hands and she did not fight to move or disagree. Her mere presence was enough to weaken the barriers between the spheres.
Eleanor drew on the upper planes, to the Abyss and felt the surge of energy that told her–no sang–of the connections in the higher aethers. Eleanor pulled and reality shifted, bringing with it a cold storm that blasted the small group with such intensity those on their feet staggered.
“For once you’re the prey, hungry one.” She laughed, watching his face as he registered the full implications of his situation.
“You can’t–”
“Who’re you to tell me I can’t, Essence wight?”
He didn’t resist, crumpling into Eleanor’s arms. He looked up at her, his expression blank.
“It will only hurt a little bit and I promise I won’t take as much as Mantis did.”
His blood tasted like honey and it took only a small amount of pressure for her tongue to tease open the partially healed wound on Trystan’s neck.
Through Arwen’s lips Eleanor gasped at the electric shock of stolen power. At the same time she drew on the aethers, the cold living flames she dreamed of but rarely had the opportunity to touch.
She only let go of the frail girl’s consciousness once she was satisfied her alchemy would yield satisfying results.
Chapter 45
Last Gasp
The return took longer, by Helen’s estimation. One moment she imagined a third eyelid obscured Troth’s eyes with a lazy flick. He smiled his Cheshire cat grin, lazy and broad with his tongue flicking to wet his lip. Then she twisted, her vision spinning in a vortex.
Water soaked her jeans to the knee and she staggered, gasping at the decompression, her ears ringing. It took her a few heartbeats to gain her bearings. False dawn painted the eastern horizon with charcoal and insects sang.
Balmy air raised gooseflesh on her skin and Helen breathed deeply of the leaf mold, the moist muddy silt of the dam and something darker, speaking in terms of iron.
The orange of the street lamps on the bridge gave more illumination than where she’d just been–where the hell had she been? An orange patina tainted her skin.
Something large splashed in the water farther out behind her, which spurred Helen into action as she shivered in horror, remembering Troth and his true form. Faint laughter rang in her ears as she sloshed to the bank. The mud showed signs of earlier struggle and a lumpy form sprawled not far from where she’d come ashore.
Against her better judgment she went to look, marveling at how the body resembled the forms discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, the way it disintegrated into flakes–ash–when she nudged it with her sneaker’s toe. It had no head. Weird.
The reek of blood was strongest here. She touched a metal spike sticking out at an angle in a nearby flower bed and her fingers came away tacky. Something untoward had occurred here.
“Damn you, Troth, you could have brought me back sooner.”
“In time to get you killed?” His voice rang in her mind. Would he maintain contact? She had a feeling she didn’t want to find out.
Now what? Helen gazed about her. The most logical step would be to get out of the park, to find a payphone and call her father.
Where had Bijou gone? Helen sucked in her breath and drew on the skill of stretching her awareness. The attempt struck her as foolish and, at first, she was sure it wouldn’t work.
The garden blazed into three-dimensional clarity, like an infrared map stretching in every direction, blurring at the edges. Small life forms lit up like torches. An owl examined her from a flame tree. An inhuman two-legged being the size of a small dog paced a hundred meters to her left. Helen did not recognize it as anything that had a name in standard nature guides. Tiny sparks at ground level reminded her of mice. The more she stretched her awareness, the more she identified, marveling at the deliberate intensity of certain plants, the sentinel trees that were old enough to gain an alien form of sentience.
She knew it was Trystan by the way he seemed almost apologetic, insinuating himself at her periphery, as if he knew well enough to avoid her. Somehow it didn’t surprise her to know he’d find her. He flared dark but her disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of her throat when she recognized him for what he was.
He drew energy toward him, as if some sort of singularity tugged at the lives of those whom he passed.
Trystan emerged from a stand of hibiscus, the red flowers blooming black in the low light.
After what she’d experienced during the past few hours she couldn’t find it within herself to be angry, although she wished she’d known about his true nature sooner, before her world had been turned inside out.
He was thinner than she remembered, and walked like an old man–careful–as if the least miss-step would break a bone. His clothes–a dark t-shirt and jeans–sported so many rips he appeared to have had a run-in with a lion. His hair hung in limp, ragged skeins on either side of his face yet his eyes were what kept her from turning her face away from his.
Years of hurt shone there–and concern. They stared at each other for a long time, until Helen spoke. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell me sooner but did you show interest because of who I am or what I could become?”
Trystan looked away, his shoulders curved inward. “I’ll be honest that I wasn’t entirely honorable, or honest. At first.”
Why did she always pick the ones who were wrong for her?
“It won’t work, will it?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“And now? I didn’t expect you to be here.”
He looked up, his thin lips twisted in a wry smile. “Would you believe me if I said I’d followed you because I didn’t want to see anything bad happen to you?”
“I’m tempted to but your very nature suggests I shouldn’t trust you.”
He twitched and kept his gazed locked on his feet, his hands, anywhere but her. “So, you want to tell me what happened to you? We were worried, and we almost got killed trying to find you.”
A cold thrill had her pause mid-step as she considered approaching him. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
He made eye contact then. “When you left, a woman with black hair came looking for you. Mantis. I ran into trouble and couldn’t make it back in time to warn you.”
Helen laughed but it was not a happy sound. “Oh, she found me, all right, as did some crazy women who had it in their heads to kidnap me and try to drag my butt all the way to the DRC. Don’t tell me.”
He kicked a small stone, worrying it into the mud with his toe. “I didn’t mean for them to get involved but they insisted.”
“Who?”
“The dwarf and the witch.”
“Are they–”
“Etienne’s fine. As for Arwen, she’s still... She’s okay.”
“My brother?”
“We left him behind. With your dad. He doesn’t know any of this.”
Relief flooded Helen’s system with a sharp burst of nausea. “Now what?”
“I don’t know. We were about to leave. Sun’s coming up soon. We don’t want to risk–”
“So, that much is true about your kind. I don’t know why I never saw it sooner. I’m disappointed. I’d been hoping that you were still one person I could count on.”
“Some doors were never meant to be opened.”
Helen’s throat constricted and she tried to swallow but it felt more as if she choked. “You’re telling me.” She rubbed at her arms, only now feeling a chill, which had descended, despite the season.
“I’ll walk you to the car park. Then I’ll stay out of your life, I promise. I’m sorry.”
Trystan hunched over, looking at once so lost
, so forlorn that Helen wanted nothing more than to rush over to him, to clasp his cold flesh to her but for awakened senses screaming at her to stay far away.
“This isn’t finished. We may have won the round tonight but there will be others. I can’t ever go back to what I had, can I?”
He shook his head.
“We’ve already established that although, by all rights, we should be mortal enemies, you’ve had dozens of opportunities to destroy me and you haven’t, why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think it’s a case of you not knowing. I think it’s a case of you not wanting to admit your feelings.” She sighed, on the verge of tears but not wanting to show her weakness in front of Trystan. His being a “hungry one” was the least of this night’s shocks compared to Troth’s rude denouement. He’d–it–had done something to her, made it so that she now viewed the world without the veneer of human ignorance that had shielded her before.
She turned her back on Trystan and stared across the dam’s darkly lapping waters, hugging herself against the cold, which had settled within. Helen knew exactly where Trystan stood, behind her, a few paces to her left, instinctively knew how much she’d have to draw on the world around her to blast him into ash.
To her heightened senses his aura coruscated cold and opalescent–without the steady roar she beheld within her own body. Everywhere she looked she saw the ghostly afterimages–the afterburn of living matter, plants, insects and small things, which burrowed in the earth or flitted between trees.
A cold, dead hand rested on her shoulder, fingers hesitant, betraying a slight tremor. How many times had she just thought it poor circulation?
Ah, hell.
Helen allowed Trystan to enfold her in his arms and she cried for her life, which had ended, for that happy-go-lucky girl and her paintings, and her dreams. She wept because she couldn’t go back home without endangering her family. What of Troth and the oath she did not want to keep? What of this war she found herself thrust into?
Trystan smelled of rust and earth, and something else, which reminded her of dust. Cold fingers brushed the hair out of her face, felt good, despite the danger.
He could have killed her a dozen times over. He hadn’t.
Cold fingers pressed a small beadwork sun into the palm of her hand.
“Trystan?”
“Helen?”
“Take me far away from this place.”
Epilogue
Darkness unpierced by light or warmth cushioned Mantis in a slow current. Her limbs dragged along the silty bottom, raising small puffs of waterborne mud she felt but couldn’t see.
The water felt warm and her empty eye sockets no longer stung. How long would it be before her eyes regenerated? She’d never lost both eyes at the same time before.
Her limbs wouldn’t respond to her urgent summons for movement. There was no point in struggling, though. Her apparent end had happened so quickly, a bright flash and she’d flown, to crash into the water of that infernal dam, to sink fast.
Panic didn’t serve her. When nothing untoward happened save for the nudgings of an inquisitive fish, she pulled inward, biding her time until she could twitch her muscles, pin herself against a submerged tree branch.
Her fingers slid as she sought purchase, loosening tendrils of slime in her efforts.
So close. So damned close.
The witch girl wouldn’t live but she’d find the black bitch who’d thwarted her plans.
Anger lent her the strength to reach though her body still remained useless. She sent her awareness traveling beyond the water to where Trystan’s dark fire co-mingled with Helen’s solar flare. No good would come of that partnership. She would make sure of it.
Mantis grinned until she felt the first eel slither across her wrist. She’d never liked snakes and this was pretty damn close to a snake. Another brushed against her cheek and something tugged at her leg.
Damn fish!
But why were there so many of them sliding over her, pulling, insistent?
Get away from me!
She snatched at one, which slipped past her lips only to lose her already feeble grip on the tree with her other hand.
The eels surged around her, making the water boil, the suddenness of their impact–thousands of bodies–catching Mantis by surprise as she found herself dragged against the current, deeper, into a crevasse she had not imagined to exist in a man-made lake.
Other Lyrical Books By Nerine Dorman
What Sweet Music They Make
The Namaqualand Book of the Dead
Hell’s Music
Writing as Therese von Willegen
About Nerine Dorman
An editor and multi-published author, Nerine Dorman currently resides in Cape Town, South Africa, with her artist husband. Some of the publishers with whom she works include Dark Continents Publishing and eKhaya, an imprint of Random House Struik. Involved in the media industry, she has a background in magazine and newspaper publishing, commercial fiction, and print production management. Her book reviews, as well as travel, entertainment and lifestyle editorial regularly appear in national newspapers. A few of her interests include music, travel, history, Egypt, psychology, philosophy, magic and the natural world.
Her published works include Khepera Rising, Khepera Redeemed, The Namaqualand Book of the Dead, Tainted Love–writing as Therese von Willegen, Hell’s Music–writing as Therese von Willegen, What Sweet Music They Make, and Inkarna.
Titles co-written with Carrie Clevenger include Just My Blood Type and Blood and Fire.
She is the editor of the Bloody Parchment anthologies, Volume One, and Hidden Things, Lost Things: and Other Stories. In addition, she also organises the annual Bloody Parchment event in conjunction with the SA HorrorFest.
She is also a founding member and co-ordinator for the Adamastor Writers’ Guild, and edits The Egyptian Society of South Africa’s quarterly newsletter, SHEMU.
Camdeboo Nights
9781616504380
Copyright © 2013, Nerine Dorman
Edited by Mary A. Murray
Book design by Lyrical Press, Inc.
Cover Art by Valerie Tibbs
First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: February, 2013
Lyrical Press, Incorporated
http://www.lyricalpress.com
eBooks are not transferable. All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
Published in the United States of America by Lyrical Press, Incorporated
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Table of Contents
Cover Copy
Highlight
Camdeboo Nights By Nerine Dorman
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
<
br /> Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Other Lyrical Books By Nerine Dorman
About Nerine Dorman
Camdeboo Nights Page 26