Heat rushes to my face and I bite my tongue despite my sense that no, we really can't wait just a moment.
Dropping herself onto the sofa, Andromeda lays down, and throws her legs nonchalantly onto the arm of the couch. Then she rolls her eyes before speaking. "I get flashes of things. Big animal, creepy ghost, messed up dudes with way more ink than necessary... and a seance going terribly wrong. So! I've come to intervene." Clapping her hands together, she flashes a smile at Jason. "And yes, handsome, this is a serval. Like I said, he's my familiar, where I go, he goes."
Chapter 22: Atlas
"I CAN'T STAND THAT woman. I don't even understand how her and Tania could be related," Jason gripes at me as we huddle in the corner of his kitchen.
"Yeah, I know. But Tania seems to trust her, so what are we supposed to do?"
"I don't think Tania trusts her; I just think she's desperate. I say we leave them here and call up Elliot. Go into town ourselves and see if we can find where The Council has got her sister."
I grimace against that suggestion, even though I know it would be the simplest plan. "The last time we split up, Tania needed stitches, and you ended up in the hospital. I'm not leaving anyone behind."
"Then send Elliot in, and we can work on the rest of it. What do we know about the Shadow World?"
Not enough.
Out loud, I respond, "Trying to cross the line between life and death is strictly forbidden, so The Council has never shared much about it. From what Tania has said, most covens work the same way. It's dangerous, and chaotic, and the only souls that exist there are the wretched idiots that went too far while astral projecting." Like Sasha, I try not to think. "Or the twisted remnants of witches and mages who never crossed over."
"So, it's a world of ghosts and terror?"
My beer is halfway to my lips, but I pause long enough to nod. "Yup," I say, punctuating the word with a popping noise on the last letter.
"I've got to level with you, man. Your girl is nice, but her family is not to be reckoned with. Bowens was called to triage because Sasha was scaring the ER staff. Do you understand how unhinged a person has to be to scare them?"
His words are filled with concern, and it's obvious he's giving me as much warning as he can during these few, private moments, but I don't care. As soon as I promised Tania, I'd help her, my world flipped upside down. Right or wrong, stupid, or not, it's too late for me to do anything but follow the course I'm on.
"Even the gentlest of souls are dangerous if they become a ghost. I'm sure having a good chunk of your soul stuck in the Shadow World would do about the same to a person. Make no mistake, I know Andy and The Council aren't the only dangers we're facing, but that's why I can't step back. I don't think Tania's realized that danger; she's too blinded by love."
"No offense man, and I know you've only known her a couple of weeks, but I think you're headed that way too."
I'd argue with him, but the look in his eyes is so sad, I step backwards to get away from it. "Calm down, Jason. I thought you were all for me asking her out last week, what's changed?'
He shakes his head slowly, letting his long hair fall over his shoulders. "Have you forgotten what a monster that giant cat is? It's hunting for witches, no doubt. I could feel it. It knocked me off my bike like I was nothing, had me under its claws... but the way it looked at my face, it was crazy. Almost as if -"
"Almost as if it were surveying your very soul? Weighing it to see if you could satisfy its hunger? Yeah, I remember."
"Then you should also know, I didn't actually run it off with your keychain. That had already hit the pavement before I did. It backed up when the ambulance came, nobody even glanced at it, it was as though it was invisible. But it watched me until Ada Gormley showed up. Her daughter Katie works at the coffee shop."
My forehead is aching from the tension between my eyebrows, and I rub my face impatiently. "So what? What does that have to do with anything?"
"They had some technical difficulties. Power outage for no discernible reason. Same thing as with the place you said you took Tania to. Two days later, the news reported damage from some kind of animal."
"What are you saying? You think the cat ditched you to follow the trail of someone distantly connected to a coffee shop that Tania happened to walk in? In that case, where's Ada Gormley? Or her daughter?"
The Council would have sent out notice if anyone had been injured or attacked after Jason. Especially mortals. The Gormley's may be a pain in the ass kind of family, but if they were hurt, we should have heard something.
"I don't know, man. But the number one danger on my list isn't The Council, or a couple of ghosts. It's the animal that is literally trying to hunt us down."
"We have no proof. El's been fine, and my mom, and Nova - and they've all met with or talked to Tania. There's nothing here but weird feelings and wild conjectures."
"Atlas, you're not listening," he starts.
"No. I am. I heard you, and I'm done. Stone, you're a wreck. There's no way you're fighting anything or anyone. I'll figure out what needs to be done, and you just stick close by your phone in case anyone needs more stitches, deal?"
His face sets into quiet anger, and he shakes his head once more. "Fine. But, for the record, I think we're all screwed."
"Noted."
"What's noted?" Tania enters the room shyly, and although her face is dry, her eyes are swollen from tears, making her heavy eyelids even more noticeable.
"Um," I falter, glancing around for an answer. "Just that I need to lay off his beers or buy him new ones," I lie, holding up the drink in my hand. "How's it going out there?"
Grey eyes flick upward in annoyance as she blows her hair out of her face. Even when we're in the midst of a crisis, I can't help but stare at those eyes.
"Well, Jason, I'm very sorry to say that your couch has been taken over by her precious Kamali. Otherwise, she's actually been pretty helpful. I came in to give you this."
She holds out a slip of paper with a few names scrawled on it in thick ink, but it passes into Jason's hands too quickly for me to decipher.
"Andromeda says you need them," she tells him. "Apparently Atlas is going to be too busy with something else, but don't ask me what, because she only likes to give vague answers about anything, ever."
"Why can't you just call me Andy?"
I have to hide a groan at the newest arrival crowding into the kitchen. Between her abrupt arrival, and her constant use of endearments, I'm ready to go ransack Bowens' house myself, just to get away from her. If only that didn't include leaving behind Jason and Tania.
"Sugar, I told you. If you want any clearer answers, I'm going to need the mirror."
"Like I said before Andromeda, you aren't authorized to use that. It's my birthright, not yours, and trust me, it's caused enough damage for me. You don't want it."
Both women turn to face each other, bracing themselves as if for a physical fight, and I tense immediately. Andy lifts her hagstone to her eye, and snarls at the sight of the shields I'm raising, but I'm not letting either of them burn down Jason's kitchen. There are enough scorch marks on my ceiling for both of our homes.
Before anyone can say a word, a dreadfully familiar keening resounds about us. A screeching, wailing horror, that sends waves of nausea through my body. The scream is as unnatural as the plummeting temperatures that accompany it. There's no need for explanations, or time. We all know what the freezing air and banshee cry precedes.
What we aren't prepared for though, is the sound of shattering glass, or the scream of a serval outside the door.
Hulking fur, and metallic eyes slink into the doorway, and somewhere over the sound of my pounding heart, I hear a strangled cry of pain and terror. I don't know who it comes from, but I throw my shield out to border Andy as she's standing far closer to the door than any of us should.
Besides me, Tania's hands begin to fly with a fury I can only partially process. Light flickers between them, and all at once she s
eems to be holding flames of pure light between her palms, glancing off and magnifying where they hit my shields.
Again, screaming pierces my eardrums, driving like a knife through my skull. This time, I see it's Andy's mouth that appears to have unhinged, more shocked than any seer should ever have the right to be.
Jason is already chanting, and I join him, linking together words and admonitions we'd been raised with. Some languages are native to our tongues, other foreign and ancient, nearly as forgotten as the power their spells hold.
Andy's screaming continues, pounding into the air with the velocity of a hawk plummeting from the sky. High and loud enough to paralyze any prey, except she's not the hunter, she's the hunted.
The demon saunters closer to us, with its giant paws seemingly silent against the screeching that deafens all but my frantic heart.
Jason collapses behind me, the agony of channeling so much energy while injured overcoming him at last. Tania's lights flicker and dim, and I move my lips as fast as I can while pulling out the knives at my waist. He was right. This was the biggest danger.
Andy's mouth is moving grotesquely, as her cries distort words she's desperately clinging to. "It's not a cat, that's not a cat!"
Despite her terror, she makes no move to avoid the teeth and claws that slink ever closer to her. Gripping a knife closer against my palm, I edge around the kitchen, hoping for a close enough shot to cause some damage to this thing before it takes me down. Anything that affords the others enough time to run.
The hair on my arms raises and a clammy layer of sweat falls down my neck. Running seems like the more appropriate choice, but fiery eyes are fixated on Tania, flicking away only to locate her cousin. Setting my jaw forward, I take a breath and run, throwing myself towards the demon.
Instead of fur, I'm met with a wall of thin wires, catching against my clothes and easily scraping my skin open in jagged lines. Where my blood pours out, so does faint traces of healing and protection spells, but they're nothing against the evil threatening to consume me.
My knives are buried deep into its flesh, and in my instant of victory, I believe that we can survive this. All too soon, though, sinew and bone twist and fly, slamming me against a countertop. My skull hits against the marble twice, jarring me from any actual awareness of the world. As I fall to the ground, I'm only sure of two things; there's more than blood obscuring my vision, and we can't all survive this.
Chapter 23: Tania
DESPITE HEARING THE terror inducing screams, and knowing I'd faced its taste for death before, I'd never been able to picture what this demon would look like. With its black coat and white spotted chest, I could almost trick myself into seeing a domesticated cat. But it moves with the force of a tiger and the threat of a jaguar. Above all, it's the energy of a black hole that scares the hell out of me. Destruction, darkness, and inevitable victory is what lends this creature its strength. This is death incarnate.
Bone crushing jaws open to reveal knife-like teeth, and release yet another screech, its talent for terror far surpassing any physical need. All of our defenses have fallen, or are failing, and I know there's no way to outrun it.
As Atlas crumples into a heap on the ground, it isn't the blood streaming down his face that breaks me down, or that I've seem to have lost Andromeda and Jason. No, it's the familiar glint of something inherently dark pulling me in.
It's the look Sasha gave me before everything went wrong. It's the look the death covens wear with pride. It's the look I try to hide every time I look in a mirror.
Now it's the look of my death. My sister's damned to hell, the seer has come too late, and my precious allies are broken on the floor. My apocalypse is here, so how many more breaths must I endure?
Hot breath crowds my face, and those fiery eyes stare me down as I abandon all efforts to save myself and stand ready for this feral reaper. The cursed cold at my back has numbed my limbs once more, and the putrid stench of rotting flesh reminds me of the corpse I'll be in just a few moments.
"Fool! I told you to be careful, I warned you! And this is how you repay me? My blood, my life, does it mean nothing to you?"
My vision clouds, and as I'm knocked to the ground, the shadow from the mirror stands over me. Blood spatters cover the grotesque shape, and a woman's mouth, torn and twisted, hisses in my ear.
"Stand up you intolerable fool! I've waited a century for someone to overturn this deal, and this is how you do it? It isn't a sacrifice if you don't even try to fight back!"
But the time for fighting is over, how can I fight when I can't even stand? Darkness overcomes all but my sense of hearing, and shrill yowls and insults hit through the static in my skull. There's no pain, no more fear, nothing but solitude.
Nothing but heather.
An entire garden bed of heather flourishes on the side of the house, and I stand against the tomato trellis, scowling at its presence.
"Why heather? Out of everything you could have chosen to grow, you pick something known for representing solitude?"
Sasha rolls her eyes at me. "I was mad at you. You wouldn't stop bothering me about going out with Robbie, so I thought if I planted enough, you'd leave me alone. Didn't work though. Instead, he stopped calling, so congrats, you got your way. Like always."
"Oh sure, exactly what I wanted; a sulking sister to overwhelm our garden with heather and use up the electric bill on watching crappy movies all day. At least I know why nobody's responded to any of my calls lately. You screwed us both."
Now she's the one scowling. "So now what do we do?"
I shrug, exasperated with the day already, despite it being well before noon. "We do what we do any other time we need to reverse a spell. Wait until a new moon. And in this case, I propose we just dig it up."
Frowning at the significant amount of the plant, and mulling over the quiet heartbreak on Sasha's face, I know that's not good enough.
"Okay, you'll dig it up, but I'll burn it too, just for good measure."
She jerks her head up at me with unhidden glee. "I love it when you set stuff on fire! I've never understood why you don't use your talent more often, it's so bad ass."
"Says the girl who literally charms snakes," I state with a deadpan expression.
Even as we're talking, she has a boa draped over her shoulders in place of a necklace; and I watch uneasily as its rose plated scales twist over her ruddy skin like living jewels.
"Rosie isn't charmed," she defends. "She's just attached to me. Besides why not use my strengths if I've got them? You hide behind all those crystals and potions like they're the only thing you can do!"
I sigh, the tension in my forehead returning as quickly as it had faded. She never lets that go.
"Fire throwing isn't exactly light magic. I would just prefer to work on the right sort of things as much as possible. Be well balanced."
She responds with a snort, distractedly pulling the reptile from her shoulders and wrapping it around her wrist.
"Right, because ignoring your affinity is sooo well balanced. So, we got chaotic talents. Who cares? The world's chaotic, I think that's balanced enough."
With that she leaves me alone in the yard, crooning to the writhing creature in her hands. Once again, expecting me to clean up the mess.
"YOU KNOW, FOR A SEER, you don't seem to be particularly adept at seeing anything helpful while we actually have time to use it."
I know that voice.
"Shut it, Handsome. Put your pretty little head to use and fix them. We don't stand a chance if we're not all standing."
Ugh. I know that voice too.
"Well, between a concussion and near suffocation, I don't think either one will be much use anytime soon." Jason snaps, his voice harsher than I've ever heard it before. "I'm just thankful her ribs are just bruised and not broken."
I'd like to argue that fact. An intense ache wraps its way around my lungs, and as much as I'd love to open my eyes, I'm terrified of what surviving means. For far too long
, I've run myself ragged for the sake of my sister, and now it seems a dead woman expects me to take on her weight as well.
"They will because they have to be. Do you see this? This is called a guide. It helps me map out anything I'm looking for, whether I'm scrying, using a dowsing rod, or even reading palms. Sasha had one, so did Tania. Both of theirs shattered, and now mine is fracturing."
That's news to me, startling enough to force me to face the present.
"What do you mean Sasha's shattered?" I gasp out, though only barely. The ache in my ribs transforms into a fire that blazes through my very core, and my eyes water so intensely, I can hardly make out the wreckage of the room around me.
"Oh, thank goodness you're talking! Sugar, you cannot scare me like that!"
Coughing, flinching, and struggling to sit up, I take her offered arms gratefully. Andromeda's showy confidence has finally dropped, and this shaky, nervous person in front of me, is more genuine than I've ever seen her. The Coven didn't send her, that much is plain on her face, but the panic behind her eyes tells a story even more haunting.
"Andromeda," I force out. "What is it? Why exactly are you here?"
She gazes everywhere but my face, as though the lack of eye contact will somehow lessen the impact of her confession. "I should have acted sooner. Everyone was blaming you for Sasha, but I knew from the very beginning you wouldn't do anything, you couldn't. You bound yourself so tight, I don't think you even realize what's at stake."
I stare at her, more confused than ever, and my heart labors against pain and fear in what must be an audible gallop.
"Sasha isn't in her right mind. I found her that night, after your trial. I swear, I was trying to help y'all!"
This is why she disappeared; this is why I couldn't find her.
"She went ballistic, started screaming at me about a broken deal, and unfulfilled destiny. I tried to calm her down, but she was dead set on finishing some ritual, so I followed her."
Shattered (Tempest Coven Novels) Page 17