Suddenly, a tan-coloured flash burst beside her, and a half-dozen coyotes went tumbling away, whining in pain and fear, many of them bleeding as they went down. Serafina’s mother ran beside her, fighting her way through, clearing her path. Her mother had returned! The lioness leapt onto the closest coyote, sank in her claws and took it down in a snapping, somersaulting ball. Serafina kept on running, driving through, gaining speed now. Her mother reappeared and took down another coyote, and then another. Soon she and her mother were running side by side unopposed, two catamounts at full speed through the forest, the coyotes well behind them.
Just as the carriage crossed a stone bridge, Serafina leapt onto the backs of the four stallions, her claws ripping into their bodies as they tried to rear up and fight her. They bent their necks in their leather harnesses and snapped at her with their crushing teeth, but they were no match for her saber-toothed fangs and razor-sharp claws. Their panicked, flailing struggles pulled the four horses wildly off-kilter. The carriage careened off the road and went tumbling down, Serafina and the stallions battling all the way, until it finally crashed into the bottom of the ravine.
She could only become what she could envision.
And finally she had envisioned it.
Find the Black One! Uriah had told his dogs. But it wasn’t the Black Cloak he had been searching for.
It was her.
He’d known she was going to get in his way.
She realised as she leapt upon the backs of the stallions and tumbled down into the ravine that her father hadn’t been a mountain lion like her mother.
He had been a black panther.
And now so was she.
It all came together in her mind. Her mother and father had fought Uriah twelve years before. Her father had been the Black One, the warrior leader of the forest who had almost defeated Uriah and whose descendants could never be allowed to rise again.
But now his daughter – the new Black One – had come into her own. And her name was Serafina.
Serafina clawed her way out of the wreckage. She leapt easily up onto a large rock and looked down at the pieces of the broken carriage, desperately searching for Braeden.
She was relieved when he crawled slowly out of the debris, battered and disoriented but still alive. When he glanced up at Serafina, his eyes widened in surprise. He was startled for a moment, but then Serafina saw the recognition flood through his expression and he smiled. He knew exactly who she was.
But he did not take the time to speak or approach her. He immediately dug through the debris and found the Twisted Staff.
‘Braeden, give that to me . . .’ Rowena said, her voice seething as she clambered from beneath the broken boards of the carriage. ‘We don’t have to fight each other,’ she said. ‘Just like you said, we’re friends. Join me and all this will be over.’
Braeden gripped the staff at each end and slammed it over his knee, but it did not bend or break.
‘You aren’t strong enough to destroy it,’ Rowena said. She stepped towards him and slowly put out her hand. ‘Just give the staff to me, Braeden, and we’ll work together. I’ll show you how to use it. We’ll combine your powers with my powers, and we’ll control everything in these mountains. No one will be able to stop us, not even the catamounts.’
Braeden looked at her silently.
‘These aren’t your people, Braeden. You know that,’ Rowena said. ‘Haven’t you felt the pull I’m talking about? You came to these mountains two years ago and you’ve been searching ever since, but you won’t find the home you’re looking for at Biltmore.’ Rowena’s lip curled a little bit. ‘It’s filled with nothing but humans.’
Finally, Braeden turned. It looked like he was going to simply walk away from her.
‘Braeden, I’m warning you one last time . . .’ Rowena said, her voice rising.
At that moment Braeden stopped. Now it seemed as if he was going to turn towards her, but he lowered his arm and then hurled the staff way up into the sky.
Rowena frowned, looking both annoyed and perplexed by his action. ‘You know it’s going to come back down,’ she said condescendingly.
But Braeden just smiled and gave a long whistling call. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said.
At that moment, something came swooping in across the darkened sky.
‘What is that?’ Rowena snapped in surprise. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just a friend of mine,’ Braeden said. ‘No wire.’
The peregrine falcon came in high, but then tilted and rolled. She reached out and grabbed the Twisted Staff out of midair with her talons. Then, with several quick flaps of her wings, Kess propelled herself upward. She seemed to drift across the moonlit sky almost effortlessly.
‘Bring that bird back here right now, Braeden!’ Rowena shouted. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’
‘Yes, I think I do,’ Braeden said, nodding as he turned from the falcon and looked at Rowena. ‘I want to make this very clear: I will never join you, Rowena.’
‘You’re going to wish you had,’ Rowena spat.
But as the staff became more and more distant in the talons of the falcon, two of the wolfhounds emerged slowly from the trees, their hearts no longer twisted by its controlling power. The wolfhounds stalked towards Rowena, their heads low and their eyes filled with menace as they bared their teeth and growled.
‘No,’ she ordered them, facing them uncertainly, thrusting her bare hands towards them. ‘No! Stop! Get out of here!’
But they did not go. And they did not stop.
‘You’re free now! Go!’ she shouted at them.
Beasts of their own will, they continued to move towards her. They were indeed free.
The dogs leapt upon her. Her shouts turned to screams. She writhed and fought. One bit her leg. The other her side. Serafina leapt into the battle to help the wolfhounds fight her. But at that very instant, there was a blur of sight and sound, and Rowena disappeared from between the two dogs.
A barn owl flapped up into the sky. Serafina pulled back in surprise, startled by what she’d just seen.
She suddenly remembered the first night she saw Uriah in the forest. She had assumed that the owl had been his familiar, his eyes and ears of the forest, but it had been Rowena! He had passed her the shape-shifting staff that very night.
And now Rowena was flying straight towards the peregrine falcon.
Serafina thought it was strange that Kess wasn’t flying high and fast like a falcon could. She was flying low and slow, down the length of the French Broad River, along an edge of jagged cliffs. Was the weight of the staff too much for her to carry, or did she have something else on her mind?
Then Serafina saw something that turned her heart cold. The grey-bearded man in the long, weather-beaten coat emerged from the trees at the top of a distant rocky hill. She could see his black silhouette in the moonlight. Serafina felt the hackles on the back of her neck rise up, the air pulling into her chest. It was Uriah. He’d finally come. The conjurer saw the peregrine falcon carrying his Twisted Staff away and the barn owl coming up behind the falcon in close pursuit.
Suddenly, Serafina understood.
She burst into a run, sprinting as fast as she could through the forest towards the cliffs that ran along the river. She knew exactly what Uriah was going to do next and where she needed to be when it happened.
Waysa had told her that Uriah had learned the dark arts during his travels in the Old World. And she remembered thinking that Uriah’s call to the owl a few nights before had been filled not just with the sense of alliance she expected, but a dark and horrible love. And now she’d seen Rowena turn into an owl, just like Uriah. Rowena wasn’t just the demon he’d sent into Biltmore to find its weaknesses. She wasn’t just the conjurer’s apprentice and the wielder of the Twisted Staff. Rowena was his daughter.
Serafina tore through the forest up the hill, straight for the rocky, hundred-foot-high cliff edge where Uriah was standing. As her black shape spri
nted invisibly through the night, she kept her eyes fixed on the elusive conjurer. Just as she’d hoped, the man disappeared with a startling blur and turned into an owl. Uriah flew towards Rowena and Kess. It was the reflex she’d been counting on, that Uriah couldn’t help but fight at his daughter’s side and take back the stolen staff. Serafina knew that she couldn’t defeat Uriah when he was in human form and able to use his hands to throw his spells. But as he flew down the length of the river along the jagged edge of the cliffs in pursuit of the falcon, she ran like she’d never run before, her yellow eyes locked on to Uriah as he flew. The flurry of her powerful legs pulled her rapidly across the terrain. Seeing the edge of the cliff in front of her, she drove forward with one last burst of power. And then she leapt.
Her timing was perfect. She sailed thirty feet off the edge of the cliff. As she soared through the air, she pulled back her paw, then slammed it forward with a mighty strike into Uriah as he flew by. Her deadly claws raked through the bird. Feathers exploded. The ravaged owl spun end over end from the force of the blow.
She’d done it.
She had defeated the man of the forest.
She had killed her enemy.
Her chest filled with relief and happiness, but then the momentum of her leap gave way to a different sensation. Free fall. She felt herself being pulled towards the earth, her fall picking up more and more speed. As she twisted her spine and righted herself, she caught a glimpse of a breathless Braeden reaching the rocky edge and looking out in terror as he realised she had jumped off the cliff.
She fell and fell. A hundred feet was too high for even her to survive, whether she landed on her feet or not. She had but one hope: that she had leapt out far enough.
She hit the water and it exploded all around her. She felt the great crash of it, and then it enveloped her. Her huge black body plunged deep into the river’s dark currents. The force of the rapids immediately began to sweep her away.
Knowing what she had to do, she quickly started paddling. She rose to the surface in a flurry of bubbles, took a deep breath, shook off her whiskers and then paddled steadily for the shore, using her long black tail to steer.
She spotted Uriah’s bloodied, white-feathered body floating down the river. She wanted to bite the owl, crush it, make sure it was dead, dead, dead, but the rapids took him away before she could catch him. She’d have to be satisfied with the havoc she had wrought.
She swam out of the rapids and hauled herself up onto the rocky shore. Waysa came trundling down the shoreline to meet her in mountain lion form, his jaunty steps making it clear that he was pretty pleased with himself, as if he were saying, I knew that swimming lesson would save your life one day.
The two catamounts quickly ran back up the path to the top of the cliff, where Braeden waited. He smiled in relief when he saw Serafina, but then he pointed.
Serafina looked into the distance. Rowena, still in owl form, was attacking the peregrine falcon with her talons, hitting Kess’s body with strike after strike. Serafina didn’t know if Rowena had seen her father die, but there was a new fierceness in the owl’s attacks.
Normally, a falcon would flip claws-up to meet an incoming dive, but because Kess was carrying the staff, she could not, so she took the hits and flew on as best she could. But Rowena was relentless, striking again and again. Then Rowena finally grasped the Twisted Staff in her talons and tried to yank it away. The two intertwined raptors locked together, clawing and screeching, tumbling down through the air, fighting as they fell. But then suddenly the falcon flew upward again, pulling with powerful strokes towards the clouds, dragging the staff and the owl with her.
‘What is Kess doing?’ Braeden asked as he peered up into the sky.
Kess flew higher and higher, ignoring the owl’s clawing talons, pecking beak and battering wings.
The two birds went so high they disappeared, even to Serafina’s eyes.
‘What happened?’ Braeden asked in astonishment. ‘Where’d they go?’
But Serafina could not reply.
Serafina could hear the two birds battling up in the sky. She heard the screeching and hissing noises of the owl, and the long kak-kak-kak of the peregrine, and then everything went quiet.
She peered up into the sky and took a breath. One of the birds finally came into view. It was flying alone, carrying the Twisted Staff in its talons. Serafina’s heart sank when she saw that it was the owl. It was Rowena. Serafina kept looking, but there was no sign of Kess. It appeared the falcon had lost the battle.
The owl flew towards them now. Serafina dreaded what was going to happen next. Once Rowena changed back, she could use her staff to start the battle all over again, hurling God knows what kinds of animals at Serafina and her allies. And it was clear that Uriah had taught his daughter well. He might not have thought too much of her, but Rowena had become a powerful young conjurer in her own right.
‘What happened?’ Braeden asked as he looked all around, his voice frantic and confused. ‘Is Kess dead? Did Rowena kill her?’
Serafina thought she must have. But then she spotted a tiny dot way up in the sky, hundreds of feet above the forest. It was Kess, flying strong, far higher than a barn owl could ever fly. Serafina wondered what she was doing way up there. Then Kess tipped into a barrel roll and dived.
Serafina watched as Kess dived through the sky towards the unsuspecting Rowena. The falcon tucked her wings close to her body and shot through the air in a striking stoop, moving faster than anything Serafina had ever seen in her entire life.
‘There she is!’ Braeden gasped at the last second, just as Kess came slashing into view.
The falcon struck the owl so hard that it popped with an explosion of feathers. Serafina could feel the force of the hit in her chest, like two stones striking against each other in midair. Then Kess pinwheeled round and raked Rowena with her talons in a second attack. The burst of white owl feathers swirled in the air. The stunned owl somersaulted lifelessly, falling towards the ground.
At the instant of the strike, the owl released the staff. It fell end over end through the air for a hundred feet. Then the falcon swooped down and grasped it in midair.
Serafina watched the body of the owl fall, dead weight all the way down and then disappear into the trees on the other side of the river. After what had just happened, it seemed that Rowena had to be dead, but Serafina watched and waited to see if the owl flew back up again. It did not.
‘Look!’ Braeden said, pointing up into the sky.
It was Kess. The falcon was flying towards them. She came in low and steady. Serafina could see her black mask and her bold white chest with its black bars. She was flecked with her enemy’s blood, but she looked healthy and strong. She gave a call, a cheerful kak-kak-kak, as she passed overhead, still carrying the Twisted Staff.
Kess flew out past the edge of the cliff and over the river. With a few strong pumps of her pointed wings, she rose higher.
Braeden whistled triumphantly to her. At first, Serafina thought he was calling her back to him to bring him the staff, but then she realised that he wasn’t. He was calling his farewell.
‘Goodbye, Kess,’ Braeden said softly. His dream that Kess would someday fly the world again was coming true. ‘Have a safe journey, my friend.’
Serafina watched as the falcon flew across the valley of the great river, and then up and over the rising forest towards the peaks of the mountains in the distance. Kess pumped her wings and tilted her tail, and a few moments later, she disappeared, gliding over Mount Pisgah nineteen miles away.
Unlike the owls of the night and the hawks of the day, Kess flew and hunted both night and day. She was a peregrine, which meant she was the great wanderer of the sky. She could fly wherever and whenever she wanted to.
Tonight she would follow the rocky ridgelines of the southern mountains and the glint of the stars and find her way southward, continuing her long journey to the jungles of Peru. Along the way, she could drop the Twisted Staff int
o a blazing volcano or use it to build a nest on a cliff in the Andean clouds. But whatever she decided to do with it, it was gone.
‘I couldn’t figure out at first why Kess was flying so low down the length of the river,’ Braeden said. ‘But then I remembered that peregrine falcons sometimes hunt in pairs, cooperating with each other to bring down their prey. She must have known that you were on her side, Serafina.’
Serafina took a long breath into her lungs and felt her heart swelling with wonder and hope.
She lifted her head and sniffed the air. There was no smell of smoke drifting through the forest. When she looked towards the house in the far distance, she didn’t see the glow of flames rising up from its walls. Essie must have warned Mr Vanderbilt and the others in time so they could put out the fires before the house was badly damaged. Essie had done it! Biltmore was saved.
It was over.
She and her allies had won.
Her enemies were finally dead.
Her mother emerged from the underbrush, bloodied and limping from her war with the coyotes. But she had defeated them. She had cleared them from what was once again her territory. She carried Serafina’s wriggling half-sister by the scruff of her neck, while her half-brother walked at his mother’s side. The two cubs were muddy, matted and stained with blood, but they were bold with life.
Relieved and exhausted, Serafina finally lay on the ground to rest, draping her long, lean black body in the grass. Her mother set down her half-sister and came over to her. Serafina could see the love and admiration in her mother’s eyes as she came towards her. She brushed up against her daughter and purred with happiness and pride. Serafina had finally done it. She’d finally become a full-whiskered catamount. Waysa sat down beside her, batting her playfully with his paws, as if to say I told you that you could do it! The catamounts were united. And they were here to stay.
Serafina gazed around her at the trees and the mighty river and the wreckage of the carriage, and tried to comprehend all that had happened. She remembered being so frustrated by her limitations, by what she could and couldn’t do at that particular point in her life. She realised now that her life wasn’t just about who she was, but about who she would become.
Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) Page 25