Daughter of Souls & Silence

by Annie Anderson

  Micah’s face is frozen in his expression of rage, but his eyes dance as if he knows he can’t speak while under this spell and removing it would set him free.

  I am so going to regret this.

  “Exspiravit mobilis,” I mutter, and he moves launching himself at me like a sprinter hearing the starting pistol, ready to tackle me if he has to.

  Splaying my fingers just so, I press the rune on the underside of the hilt, the athame springing into its true length, and I swing just like Aidan taught me, catching Micah under his left arm. If he were alive, that swing would have taken his arm off, but since he’s a ghost it only makes him howl at me.

  And then I’m not standing in front of Micah. I’ve been yanked away, spinning from the momentum as Ian takes my place. I didn’t see him get here, I didn’t hear him, but here he is fighting a battle I didn’t ask him to fight. I wish I could be mad at him, but I can’t.

  Unlike me, Ian can touch Micah, and he does. Gripping Micah’s neck, Ian shakes a rattling totem at him. The top of the totem is made from an animal’s skull – a bird of some kind, possibly a raven or crow, but I’ve had enough of those animals to last a lifetime, so I hope not. The rest is feathers and a carved wooden handle, engraved with sigils I’ve only seen in my French Creole grimoires that freak me way the hell out.

  Ian’s speaking an old bastardized French Creole, a dialect I haven’t heard before, so I have no fucking idea what he’s saying. But Micah does. He’s screaming obscenities at him, cursing him and his children, promising vengeance in all its forms.

  But one word catches my attention.

  Messorem. Harvester. Reaper.

  “Don’t kill him,” I murmur, the ache of Micah’s touch seeping into my bones. “Someone sent him after me when he was alive. I want to know who.”

  Ian’s chanting stops, the shaking of the totem along with it, but his hand at Micah’s throat is like a vice.

  “The question isn’t who sent me to you. The question is who pulled the Angel’s strings to send a Demon to your door,” he rasps, “Think about that.”

  A blonde bitch who is also an Angel? Yeah, I only know one of those. Rage courses through me, but by a force of will I manage to choke it back.

  “Ruby sent you to me. Did she happen to inform you why?”

  Micah smiles, loving the banked rage shining in my eyes. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Then you’re of no use to me.”

  Micah’s eyes go wide, fear in their wide grayed-out pools. He struggles, shoving at Ian, managing to catch him under the chin and Ian’s hand loses its grip. Micah doesn’t waste what is likely his only opportunity to escape. The house rumbles as he fades out, the glass levitating from the floor before exploding outward once again.

  I don’t come out unscathed. Ten or twenty shards of glass are embedded into the arm I used to cover my face and neck. Even more are entrenched like darts in my cabinets and walls. Maria and Ian have a few, but I seem to have taken the brunt of Micah’s rage.

  Lucky me.

  Aidan picks that moment to startle awake, just as his brother is checking him over.

  If Micah’s little attack has taught me anything, it’s that I need to get my wards back up – and pronto.

  “Maria, can you cast?” I ask wanting to get in the yard before the sun goes down. The last thing I need is to try warding this place in the dark.

  She looks up from Ian’s hands as he checks his brother’s vitals, her eyes a shocky kind of wide I know all too well.

  “Y-yeah. I can cast.”

  Giving her something to do will help us both, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to figure out why the hell Ruby sent Micah to me. “Good, follow me. We need to re-ward this place now.”

  “I have plywood in the garage. See what you can make work if you can’t repair the back door. This place needs to be secure and now,” I tell Ian, earning me a terse nod in response.

  He might have thought I create this kind of havoc on my own, but Micah’s confession is proof positive that someone started this mess, and it wasn’t me.

  Maria follows me out the back door, into the greenhouse where I pick up my smudge stick.

  “Is this all you’re warding with? A smudge stick?”

  I look from the burnt end of the smudge stick back to her. Her eyes are incredulous, mouth a grim line. “What else am I supposed to use?”

  A strangled sort of croak falls from her lips.

  “No wonder people have been breaking your wards left and right, big sister. You suck at warding. Let me show you how it’s done,” she offers, brushing by me and my puny sage, snagging my pruning shears on the way.

  I guess I’m about to get schooled by my little sister.

  Warding her way is complicated. And takes about a bazillion ingredients – luckily, I had them all, but Fates, she had a laundry list of crap. Stones, fetishes, and so much salt. Seriously she might make quarries go out of business.

  “And then we’re supposed to set it all on fire?” I ask again. It may or may not be my fifth time asking.

  I’ve done wards so complex even Aurelia can’t get visions through them. So airtight Wraiths can’t feel their mates through them. So badass cell signals won’t work. I have never, not once used a single stone, rose petal, or bird feather in any of them.

  But I don’t tell her that.

  “Yeah. One at each corner of your home.”

  “Well that will go over well with the neighbors,” I mutter, but do as she says, arranging a bowl at the northern point, light it on fire, and move to the next one, trailing a line of salt from one to the next.

  “I know you think your way is better, but if you have ghosts after your ass, you might want to try it my way – just for a little while. Your way keeps out living things. Not dead things.”

  Okay so she has a point.

  I move to the next and the next, setting small bowl of blessed oils, dried herbs, feathers, and rocks on the raised retaining wall surrounding my property. Fucking rocks. Do rocks even burn?

  “Point taken.”

  She takes a deep breath as if she’s gearing up for something. Then she lets it rip.

  “I want you to at least consider trying to find Mom,” she says in a rush as if she wants to get all the words out before I say no. She used to do the same thing when we were kids.

  Pursing my lips, I pretend to think about it. “I’m not giving up the blade.”

  “And I don’t expect you to. But if we don’t find her, Andras might kill her. I know you don’t like her, but Mom is really important to our coven and to the American covens. Losing her would be a blow.”

  “I know someone who might be able to help us, but she’s not going to like us coming to her with this any more than I like having to ask her,” I hedge, trying to warn Maria before she gets her hopes up.

  In all likelihood, Bernadette isn’t going to help us. Not once she finds out who took Mom and what he wants in exchange. But she’s crafty enough that she just might put aside her duty and help me. Even if it’s to deceive her son.

  “I’ll take it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MAX

  “You have got to be shitting me.”

  Maria has said this at least four times since we started on the trek to Bernadette’s cabin in the valley, walking the two point three miles in the dark. I don’t tell her we probably could have traveled here, and trying to not laugh at her is likely going to give me a hernia. I say probably on the travel bit because I have no idea what kind of booby traps Gramma has set up in this place and I’m really not willing to find out.

  I’ve got juice, but Bernadette, AKA Lilith, AKA all hail the Queen, AKA the baddest bitch in Hell, has juice. I don’t know if she has traps or if she even thinks it’s pertinent to set any, but I’m not going to piss her off if I don’t have to.

  Just like the last time, it’s pitch dark when we make it to the trailhead which looks out onto a ninety-degree cliff and the valley below. And just like l
ast time, there is no way on this earth or any other I’m belaying down that bitch.

  I look over the cliff, the moonlight catching the tips of the razor-sharp rocks just right, and start busting up laughing, unable to hold back any longer.

  “Yeah, there is no way we’re climbing down there. We travel from here. It’s the reason I brought Aidan.”

  Well, that and Ian refused to come. He hasn’t said much to me since he decided to end things unless it’s to try and tell me what to do.

  “I can’t take you, but Aidan can. But the ride is going to suck, so don’t bitch out and puke, deal?” The last thing she’ll want to do before meeting who we’re meeting is to puke right before the introductions.

  “Fine. How bad could it be?”

  Famous last words, little sister. I think those words and manage not to say them, which is good, because the veil between what I think and what I say is usually pretty thin. I only manage a shrug, and then snap my fingers, landing in the stream again, soaking my Chuck’s and startling a falcon on a nearby tree branch. Its feathers ruffle as it shrieks at me.

  Sorry, bird.

  Grumbling, I snatch my flashlight from my pack, signaling to them that it’s safe and to give Aidan a visual marker of where to land. Not a second later, Aidan and Maria are in the stream, and Maria is trying not to gag. I pass over my water bottle so she doesn’t heave.

  “Fates, that is awful,” she mutters, sucking down more water to wash away the likely heaviness on her tongue.

  Been there.

  “Okay, like I said. Be nice. Don’t be an asshole, and wipe your feet. I’m going to knock on the ward. Don’t go ahead of me and cross. I have absolutely no idea what that thing will do.” I leave out the part where it won’t hurt me because I’m a blood relative.

  Them on the other hand…

  I gently tap, tap, tap on the pale luminescent hex lines of the ward and wait. Not ten seconds later, the door pops open, and Bernadette flies out of the cabin.

  “Maxima, dearie, I’ve missed you. I was afraid you’d hate me after that whole blade nonsense,” She rushes, stopping only when she notices I’m not alone. “Oh! You’ve brought guests. Come in, come in. I have brownies just out of the oven.”

  Bernadette gestures to Aidan and Maria to head in, but Maria stops and murmurs in my ear before she passes me. “She isn’t going to fatten us up and eat us, is she? Because Grimm fairy tales are there for a reason.”

  I bite my lip to keep from giggling and pray Bernadette didn’t hear her. I shake my head ‘no’ and give my sister big eyes. The ones that say she’s going to get us in trouble. Maria got ‘big eyes’ a lot when we were kids. Half the times I was reprimanded for being insolent, Maria was the one who made me laugh.

  “Bernadette, this is my friend, Aidan, and my sister, Maria.”

  Bernadette takes each of their hands in turn, clasping their right hands in both of hers. She’s smiling while she does it, but her eyes take a far-off quality that makes me wonder what she really sees. Does she see the future like Aurelia? Does she see the past like she did with me?

  Or does she see possibilities?

  I suppose I’ll never know unless I ask her, but now isn’t the time for that conversation.

  “It seems you never visit me with good news, Maxima, and never at a more reasonable hour. Are you nocturnal? Some of us are like that,” she offers not unkindly.

  “No… well, I might be. When my tattoo shop was still standing, I worked until midnight most nights, and didn’t typically get home until two a.m.” I say it offhandedly, but Gramma’s eyes narrow at my use of the word ‘was’ in reference to my shop.

  She presses her lips together as she gestures to a light-colored sofa and a pair of chintz chairs offering us a place to sit. “Yes, well, we know who is responsible for that, don’t we? I had no idea he would go after you so quickly, dear. I had no idea he even had the thought in his head.”

  She’s referring to Andras, but everything about how things have played out in the last few days makes no sense. Why tear down my wards only to leave the safe behind? Why attack my shop? Was it to get the blade from the safe? And if it was, why use my mother as bait? Why not strike me once it was out?

  And Ruby.

  I’d guessed it was her, but I didn’t know for sure. Micah had never said her name specifically.

  “I know you didn’t, but there is something we need to talk about.”

  “Of course, dear,” she murmurs and then sweeps her hand in the air in a circular motion then snaps her fingers. A full tea service appears on the coffee table. “Drink your tea. It’s a nice oolong.”

  I take a teacup and a cucumber sandwich, nibbling on the end more from nerves than actual hunger.

  I’ve never actually seen Bernadette pissed off before, and well, if there was anything to take a normally genial person straight to the edge, it’s family bullshit.

  “Andras sent me a message,” I pause, waiting for her to digest what I just said. I can’t imagine what she must be feeling. One of her sons killed the other. To be in this position in and of itself must be torture. “He has my mother and wants the bone blade in exchange for her.”

  “No.” The clink of her teacup hitting the saucer, is slight but still makes me jump. I spare a glance at Maria, and her eyes fill at the abrupt denial.

  “I understand your position, but could you tell me why he wants it? If he killed Samael, then he already has something that will kill a Demon. He doesn’t need the blade. So why is he going through so much trouble to get it?”

  Bernadette sighs and relaxes her rigid posture, leaning back on the cushions. “Because he can? Because he’s killed with it before? I made that blade ages ago in a very dark time in my life. Hell had just been made, and our tasks there made me frightened of what I would become. Hell is a place for punishment, and Demons are the punishers. We were chosen by the Fates to dole out our power only to the most wicked, and at first it seemed righteous. But as the years went on… I couldn’t separate myself from the punishment I gave. I made the blade and the spell, but I never married them. And when my husband started hurting people not remanded to Hell, hurting my children, myself, started talking of war with the Angels, I gave my son the blade and Teresa the spell. Your father killed my husband. Not necessarily at my request, but he had my help. The blade I planned on using to kill myself took my husband’s life. That blade might not be the only one with the power to kill a Demon, but it is the only one that can remand a soul, taking the soul’s power for itself.”

  It takes a full minute to digest what she’s saying. The blade that currently sits at my hip killed my grandfather and however many it took to get to him.

  And that wasn’t even its real purpose.

  “Why did you make it so it would take the soul?”

  “Because I feared with all I’d done, with all the punishment I gave, I wouldn’t be worthy of the Otherside. I would go back to Hell, and I would rather be trapped in a vast nothingness than go back to that place. Spirits that have been housed inside it seek it for its silence.”

  A weight heavier than I would have expected settles on my heart.

  I freed them.

  All of them.

  All of those souls.

  “The break. It let them all out. Some have already come for me. Micah in particular. He said someone sent him to me – when he was alive. A blonde Angel. I worry that the person who sent him to me is Ruby.” Admitting this out loud is something that could get me killed. The Demon-Angel no-touch rule is serious. I have no doubt that if it’s proven Ruby did send Micah to me it could violate the Armistice.

  “If it was Ruby, then the Council will let it go. She got a Demon to do her dirty work for her, that’s how we’ve dealt with our enemies for eons – by getting someone on their side to pull a little friendly fire. Plus, dear, I hate to remind you, but you’re a Rogue. No Council member could rule on the side of a Rogue, and you know it as well as I do. I don’t like it, but I can’t chan
ge it. I can’t start the war that will end this world for just one person – even if that person is you, dearie. I’m sorry for that, but it’s the truth.”

  I know it isn’t intended to feel like a slap, but it does. Although I know why she feels this way, it still stings a little even though in no way do I want the world to end just because Ruby is a dick.

  It’s the indifference that really hurts.

  “I can accept that. She’ll at least lose her job, right? I’m all for the world not ending, but she shouldn’t have as much power or be as close to someone with power as she is if she’s sending out Demon kill squads. And moreover, why though? Why me? I didn’t even know her name when Micah came to me. Why send him my way when I’d never even met the woman?”

  “I suppose I’ll make sure Caim asks her,” she replies curtly, and I fear she’s leaving something out. Like she’s keeping something from me. Everything about her answers just haven’t seemed right at all.

  Nothing about this night is right.

  It takes a full minute of silence before Aidan stands – having said almost nothing since he got here, he only nods in deference to Bernadette, and walks right out the door. The line of his shoulders vibrates in anger, and while I’d like to think it’s on my behalf I know it probably isn’t.

  I’m a Rogue. Why should I expect anyone to really give a shit about me? Even family.

  Maria manages a polite, “Excuse me,” before she follows suit.

  “I know you’ll do what you think is right, Maxima, but giving him that blade will surely mean all of our deaths. You must see that.”

  I stand, skirting the low coffee table and pressing a kiss to her forehead. I do see how giving up the blade could mean my death, but it makes me wonder how much of a stain I’ll have on my soul if I don’t.

  I attempt to rise when Bernadette reaches for the sheath that holds the bone blade, her fingers latching onto the hilt before the spell that keeps it safe slams her back. Her face is awash in shock with threads of anger and a little bit of shame, but I can feel nothing but disappointment.