I scrambled over to the side, away from them, my bed a barrier between us. “Who are you and which one of you is playing Arawn today? Because I’m not up for this.”
My parents looked at one another and Stephen backed toward the door. “Addison, I’m going to call the doctor.”
My mother nodded her consent to him before turning back to me. “Sweetie, you’re just not feeling very well right now. We’re going to call the doctor.” Placing a hand on either side of my face, she spoke softly. “We love you, Kellen. We’ll find a way to make you feel better.”
All the tension that had wracked my body melted away. My mother, the woman who’d once been my best friend in the world…My family around me…Everything that I ever wanted…
Swallowing hard, I tried to remember the urgency, the tension from a moment ago, tried to recall why I’d felt so panicked, but I just couldn’t. Then it moved to the forefront of my mind. “Mom, can you help me with my resume later? Now that I’ve graduated, I need to start applying for jobs,” I said.
“Sweetie, you haven’t graduated yet. You still have another term to go, but we’re so proud of you. We have those appointments next month to go and visit medical schools, too,” she said. “You’re going to be a wonderful doctor, Kellen.”
A smile transformed my face as I reached up and hugged her. Her praise was the greatest gift. “Yes, Mom. Yes, I will.”
“Come on, you. Let’s go downstairs and have breakfast before Roger finishes it all.” She laughed, extending her hand to me. I took it.
I followed her downstairs to the kitchen. The sound of our footsteps evaporated on the rich, gold plush carpeting. “Mom, did you have the carpet changed in here?” I asked.
She turned and looked at me, a surprised smile on her face. “Of course, when we first moved in. The place was so depressing, so intimidating. It’s much homier with these lighter colors, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” Something was nagging at my brain again, forgotten thoughts knocking at the door, but I pushed them aside. Jogging, I reached up and caught my mother’s hand. “So what’s for breakfast?”
We walked into the kitchen and as I looked out through the windows, I couldn’t help but stop and stare at the glorious fall day outside. As I sat down at the table, Roger walked in, a towel around his neck, his wet swim trunks dripping on the floor.
My mother’s voice sounded stern as she spoke. “Go up and change, right now. You’re getting water all over the floor.”
Roger shrugged. “Sorry, Mom.” With a small smile for me, he turned and walked back in the direction he’d come.
Sitting at the table, my stomach growled as Jane brought over an enormous stack of pancakes, a plate of fruit, and a pot of coffee. I poured coffee into a cup, and then took a huge calming drink.
Stephen walked in then. “Just got off the phone with Dr. Evans. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” He looked at me, concern etched onto his face. Patting my shoulder, Stephen walked over and grabbed a glass of water. “Thanks, Jane. Breakfast looks delicious.” He gave her a polite smile as he passed by.
“Of course, Master Stephen,” Jane said.
Again something nagged at the back of my mind. But what was it? Something about my resume?
We ate breakfast companionably, as a family. Stephen talked about his latest class and Addison shared news about a new company that she’d just started. She painted murals for corporations and her waiting list was twelve months deep. At the mention of murals, something again pricked at my memory.
Toward the end of breakfast, the back door opened and a man walked into the room, carrying a black bag. “Stephen, Addison.” He nodded as he said each name.
“We’re so glad you came, Dr. Evans,” Stephen said, rising to shake his hand.
The doctor nodded before walking into the room and sitting down in the chair next to me. My head throbbed from the effort of trying to recognize him. Straining my eyes, I stared hard at the doctor.
“Kellen.” He inclined his head in my direction. It all came back to me, a memory repressed.
Cali.
Arawn.
The second part of the prophecy.
I leaned forward in my seat. As I did so, my mother’s pendant spilled over my collar to rest on the front of my shirt.
The benign expression that I’d beheld on my father’s face only a moment ago disappeared. Now Stephen’s face was a picture of greed, of longing. His eyes never left the pendant, and neither did my mother’s.
“That’s an interesting piece of jewelry. Where did you get it, honey?” She tugged at her ponytail, her previous fresh-faced appearance faded to frazzled.
Staring at her, I spoke, my words cutting. “I got it from you, in a letter that I received from you after you died by Stephen’s hand.”
She didn’t react, but instead stared at me. “Died? But honey, I’m fine. Are you sure you didn’t pick it up for a girlfriend or something? Maybe a girl at school, huh?” She smiled, chiding me.
I stared at her. “All of this,” I said, gesturing around, “is an illusion, isn’t it? You’ve been trying to keep me away from the battle, to make me forget how I came to be here. You’ve been toying with me.”
Then I turned to the man posing as Dr. Evans. “Hello, Willock,” I said. Willock laughed out loud.
As I’d said the words, the perfect scene before me melted away like a watercolor painting struck by a spray of water. In moments, what appeared before me quickly went from being a scene in my most wonderful dream to what would become one of my greatest nightmares.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CALI—DEATH
I gazed around the mountaintop. Where was the portal? Was that it there? I took a few steps forward and the man in the white robe from the battle appeared directly in front of me.
I tried to make my voice sound threatening. “Who are you?”
“I am no friend to you, princess.” His eyes glowed an unusual violet color. I’d never seen anything like it before.
“And I am no princess. Who are you?” I took a step forward, hoping to pass by him.
He only had to raise a hand and I found myself unable to move. Who was this creature that he had so much power and I’d never heard of him?
My head throbbed. I knew he toyed with me. “I don’t know what you are talking about. What have you done with my husband?” The word felt foreign on my tongue, yet more concrete than fiancée.
“The young St. James is not yours yet, as we both know,” he said evenly, brushing his hand off on the side of his clothing.
“He’s as good as my husband,” I said. Kellen will be mine.
The man’s brows rose as I moved, but his face otherwise did not change. “He is as good as dead.”
His counter disarmed me and I swallowed forcefully, the taste of bile in my mouth. “You’re wasting my time. Who are you and what do you want?”
“Who I am is not important. What I want is to stop you from opening the portal.”
“Then I am afraid you will be disappointed,” I said, letting the flames loose from my hands to surround my adversary. But inside the ball of fire, I could see that he’d created a bubble, a form of protection for himself. He had a talent for shielding, but how to get my only weapon past that shield?
Backing up toward the center of the mountaintop, I looked at what I thought might be the portal and cried out “Open!”
One of the worse possible things that could happen did: nothing. Not only did the portal not open, but no help came. Oh no. What could I do? How could I stop this man as a mortal?
In the distance, the sounds of fighting still rang out. The earlier battle appeared to rage on, continuing up the mountain from the lower level. My legs were unstable, shaking as I fought back, knowing that I would have no choice but to give up the offensive very soon.
“Open!” My cry came louder this time, but still nothing happened. “Open!” This time I screamed the word, piercing the night. As I cried the word, the fire wi
thin me petered out, weakening. My mortal state, which had never been designed to wield Fire, probably could not sustain it.
And still no response. It seemed obvious that Dillion had been mistaken. A portal did not exist.
The man in white threw off the fire and it burst back on me, passing over me but not before it singed my hair, burned my skin. “Ahh!” My cry echoed weakly across the rocky mountaintop as my gift bounded back on me, throwing me to the ground.
He walked toward me, laughing. “You thought you could destroy us, could fight us off. But you were wrong.”
I tried to get back on my feet, but my body burned as a thousand pinpricks pierced my skin. Looking up, I observed the swarm of faeries flying overhead. Those weren’t pinpricks; they were arrows. Looking down at my body, I watched as blood began to seep out of the tiny wounds on my skin. I fell to my knees, not yet defeated but unable to stand up another moment.
Suddenly the word formed in my mind, but I couldn’t be certain if I’d be able to say it. Would it be loud enough? The word slipped through my lips. “Oscail.”
The man in white stood above me. “You are valiant, young one, but you will not win alone.”
Refusing to look away, I stared the stranger in the eye. “I am never alone.”
“No, she is not.”
My heart leapt as I leaned toward the sound of a new voice. I’d done it! I’d opened the portal!
My brother, Cabhan, stood there, looking every bit the warrior angel. Though he’d given up his life to be with his mortal love, he’d come to save me. The man in white looked taken aback, but didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He held his hand aloft and with a soft pop a sword appeared in his grip.
Cabhan didn’t hesitate. He charged forward and as he did so, what appeared to be a full army of angels charged out of the portal, their swords at the ready. I managed to stand, but my unsteady legs threatened to fail me. Waiting, I searched for some sign of my parents. Though it had only been a short time, I needed to see them, to feel their arms about me. Just like a child, I longed for their comfort. But they didn’t come.
“Cali, are you all right?” Cabhan flew to my side, landing and taking my hand in his. I looked up into his eyes and I didn’t need to say that I wasn’t. This had all gone horribly wrong.
“Go and block him, all right? I need to get to the portal,” I said, knowing that I would surely die the moment I touched the lush green grass of Ireland.
Cabhan went after my captor, his relentless nature coming out. The strange man only laughed. He seemed to find Cabhan’s efforts merely entertaining and not threatening in the least. Meanwhile, faeries fell everywhere as the battle continued.
As quickly as I could, I crawled toward the portal, though it terrified me. With the arrival of Cabhan, I hadn’t had a chance to look at it properly, and the swirling vortex of dark that stood out on the mountain before me looked like nothing more than a revolving black hole. Occasionally, a color would shine out from the opening. Hues of purple, red, yellow, and blue, among others, seemed to burst out of it periodically.
Though sick from the exertion, I made my way to the opening, my hand outstretched. This was it. Now or never. Taking a deep breath, I stood and backed up a couple of steps.
The sounds of the battle increased and I could hear the clashing of swords. “Cali, go!” Cabhan’s voice spurred me on as an arrow whizzed past my head.
I ran forward as quickly as I could and jumped off the side of the mountain, toward the vortex that would take me away from it all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
KELLEN—LIAR
Standing in my father’s kitchen, I watched as the scene before me melted away. In mere moments, I went from looking at my beloved mother to looking at a corpse. She sat there at the kitchen table, a rotting, stinking corpse with no trace of her former soul, her former self. Of course, I had no idea whether the corpse I looked at was actually my mother’s or just some random poor soul’s body.
My stomach heaved and I leapt out of the chair, mentally vomiting on the inside, freaking out. Willock still sat there, made of flesh and bone, though he’d lost his white doctor’s coat. His eyes mocked me, but Willock’s presence didn’t upset me nearly as much as Stephen’s absence.
Where Stephen had been standing, there now stood a man who wasn’t a man at all, but the Lord of Faerie.. He appeared exactly as I remembered.
“Greetings, young St. James,” Arawn said in a high-pitched voice. More shadow than man, he appeared as a black mass with little distinct characteristics to identify him save his gleaming red eyes. You could make out a chin, arms, legs and so on, but it appeared as though someone had taken scissors and simply cut his form out of the air. Pulsing through from behind the cutout was nothing but blackness. He was too disturbing to look at. Too much to take in.
Despite the intangible physical structure of Arawn, he wore a rust-colored robe that fell loosely from his body in a thousand wrinkles. In his hand, a staff that I didn’t recognize from our last meeting supported him. Perhaps he was injured?
Arawn’s voice captured my attention. “So we meet again. It was inevitable, of course. I arranged it, after all.” Arawn’s voice sounded too high-pitched. It grated on my nerves and senses.
Watching him carefully as he spoke, I noticed that some things had changed about Arawn. If I focused, I could see small patches of light shining through him, like tiny fractures.
“So sorry about your father. I took his soul, you see. He was a bit of a bastard anyway,” Arawn continued.
Standing, I glared at Arawn. “Only because you made him that way. You stole away the real Stephen years ago. My father was nothing more than a changeling.” It hurt to say that—in part because I didn’t want it to be true and in part because I didn’t know what that meant for me if it was. Was I a changeling too? Would I turn bad?
Arawn’s eyes popped open wider and they seemed to nearly encompass his entire face for a moment. Twin red lasers against a sea of darkness. “Very good, Kellen. You are quite intelligent, aren’t you? Yes, he was a changeling, but a very good one, because he was my personal creation!” Looking around the room, he observed, “This is a rather unpleasant scene, do you not think so?” He gestured at the collection of corpses. He waved a hand and in the next instant, the three of us were sitting in the study.
Arawn looked around, seeming to nod his head in approval. “Yes, yes, much better. I have to say,” he said, looking back to me, “I do apologize for having your mother’s body exhumed, but I really had little choice in the matter. It was the best possible way to bring her back for my purposes.”
Expelling the breath in my lungs, I stared at him. Pure, unadulterated rage filled every fiber of my being as I inhaled. Standing, I ran at him, only to be knocked back ten feet and thrown into the doorframe.
Pain sliced down my back like a knife. I could barely see through my eyes for the red haze that clouded them. My ears rang as though my head was on the inside of a tolling bell. I wanted to lash out again, to go after him, but I didn’t stand a chance if I did.
I needed to stand a chance. That was the only way I could possibly get back to Cali.
Doing a quick inventory, I realized that nothing had been broken. Nothing seemed out of place, no blood. Everything just hurt like hell. Gingerly I stood, and walked back to the couch, my head held high. If we were going to be pleasant, I might as well keep up the pretense.
“Sorry about that. You…you took me by surprise.” I inclined my head in his direction. Arawn gestured to an armless chair across from him. I took it.
Arawn chuckled. “Of course. Completely understandable given the circumstances, Kellen.”
Something about the way he said my name made me uncomfortable, like those emergency broadcast messages that popped on the television occasionally. The strong beeping became too much to take and I usually ended up turning it off or leaving the room. Arawn’s use of my name gave me that same sort of feeling, though I couldn’t turn Arawn o
ff or leave the room.
Willock had been pacing behind Arawn since we’d moved. He kept looking at me and then looking away as Arawn spoke. It seemed as though he was undecided about something.
Though I wanted to dig deeper, to find out about the family that was even more of a mystery now than it had been before, I realized that I would need to play it cool. If Arawn knew that I wanted something, even information, he’d make sure I didn’t get it.
“Why my family? Why send a changeling in place of the real Stephen? Why not send the first one back?”
“The real Stephen St. James wanted to see our realm, to visit Faerie. He entered it one night in dreams and I chose to keep him,” Arawn said, setting his hands on what I assumed were his knees.
“I know what he did,” I said, trying to keep the impatience that would probably get me killed out of my voice. “I mean, why did you keep him and send the clone back?”
“I’m not unlike other men, Kellen. Once I reached two thousand years of age, I started thinking about to whom I would leave my legacy. I have no children. I wanted children, but Danu…She refused,” Arawn said. Talking to him could only be described as maddening because I had no facial expressions to refer to, much like having a phone conversation. “Danu and I were lovers, you see,” he added.
Shock took every question straight out of my mind and I sat at the edge of my seat, enthralled by the most unusual of cliffhangers.
Arawn laughed. “Ah! You should see your visage, Kellen. It betrays your thoughts! Oh, how it betrays your thoughts! I did not look then as I do now. I was handsome, perhaps the most handsome god ever. Yet Danu would not consent to be my wife. She would not have a family with me, though I was created for her. She claimed that she sensed darkness in me. That I would turn from her one day. She was a bit prophetic, you see, for that was exactly what happened. The dark seduced me and I fell under its spell, for it is not possible for light to exist alone—there must be darkness to balance it.”
The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) Page 28