The Hanged Maiden: A Reverse Harem Romance (Rise of the Ash Gods Book 1)

by Cara Wylde

  “You’ve got this.”

  It was sweet of her Higher Self to be nice for a change, but Valentina didn’t have time to acknowledge it. She’d said to the monster that she wasn’t alone, but she was starting to feel that was a lie. Alexander and Hephaestion could offer moral support, but moral support wouldn’t save her life.

  “No, you were right,” the voice in her head said. “You’re not alone.”

  Valentina focused on the green energy gathering in her palms sphere after sphere. It was getting weaker. One more step, and her heel hit the wall. She felt panic squeeze her heart like a claw, and she took two steps forward even though that only got her closer to the smoke monster.

  “Like this...”

  Her skin prickled when she felt someone’s hand on her right arm, grabbing her elbow and pushing her hand forward, palm up toward the enemy. But there was no one next to her. She could feel someone’s presence by her side, could almost smell them, too, – green grass and summer poppies, – but couldn’t see who it was. Invisible. She gasped when another invisible hand grabbed her left elbow, and pushed her forward with a firm hand on her lower back. Someone else. Fresh, powerful energy she’d never felt before poured through her whole body, rushed through her arms, and shot through her palms right at the two heads of the smoke being. It was of such a dark green that it was almost black, and for a moment, Valentina didn’t recognize herself. This wasn’t her. She wasn’t capable of such a fierce attack, and she’d never worked with energy so dark and heavy before.

  “You have to fight fire with fire.”

  The whisper that came from her left made her whole body shiver. Had she heard that voice before? She wasn’t sure. Maybe. In a different lifetime. She wasn’t alone, and it wasn’t because the King and the Knight were there, nor because her Higher Self was suddenly being very pleasant. She wasn’t alone because there were two invisible beings by her side, and the dark energy was pushing the smoke monster back, allowing her to move to the center of the altar room, but not because she wanted to, but because her mysterious allies were guiding her.

  “Right through the middle,” one of the voices whispered just before letting go. The other invisible being let go, too, and Valentina found herself facing the monster alone one last time. Her energy was green again. She directed it where she saw the two beings that made the monster were linked in the middle, and cut through the smoke like a sharp knife through a mushy, rotten fruit.

  The two sides stood like that, in the air, for a mere second that Valentina felt lasted a century, and then they fell to the ground, lifting puffs of black smoke all around them. When the smoke dissipated, what was left was blood, bruised flesh, and broken bones. A manticore and a mermaid.

  “No. It can’t be.” Valentina pressed both hands to her chest. She was breathing heavily, her lungs trying to keep up with her racing heart. Her knees were shaking, but she was able to gather her remaining strength and step closer to the creatures she’d just defeated.

  “Dead,” Alexander said.

  “It’s not possible. Mermaids and manticores are fourth-dimensional creatures. They can’t even cross to this dimension. This doesn’t make any sense.”

  She reached out and touched the wet, tangled mane of the manticore. When the beast didn’t move, Valentina was finally sure that it was, indeed, dead. She pushed its head back to reveal its red, glassy eyes and frozen sneer. It looked just as terrifying as in the Bestiaries her father had in his library. She moved to the mermaid, but she shuddered at the thought of touching the creature’s leathery skin. It looked like a young woman with smooth, perfect complexion. She could have been considered beautiful if not for the gills on her neck and around her collarbone, and the sharp teeth protruding from her large mouth. The creature’s body was sickly thin, with saggy breasts and visible ribs, and a long, black fish tail that smelled of mud and rot.

  Valentina barely had enough time to take in all these details before the two bodies started shriveling and shrinking until there was nothing left of them, except for dust and a few bones here and there. Just like it had happened to the High Sorceress and the High Sorcerer.

  “Keeper?”

  Valentina stood up and wrapped her arms around herself. She suddenly felt like she had a fever.

  “I have no idea what happened here,” she said.

  Hephaestion hit her playfully in the shoulder, a huge smirk on his face.

  “I know what happened. You kicked their asses. That stunt you pulled... I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Val shook her head. “That wasn’t me. I... I don’t have that much power.”

  The Knight shrugged as if she was just talking nonsense and being more humble than necessary.

  “I think you do. One day, you will see it, too.”

  Valentina rolled her eyes and took out her deck. It was time for the King and the Knight to get back into their cards, and for her to get out of there. She wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the Temple of the Trionfi Chiari. She needed to think, but she couldn’t think there. Creatures that weren’t supposed to set foot in the third dimension, the masculine cards of the Major Arcana burned to ashes, invisible allies helping her defeat the smoke... What did it all mean? She ran out of there and got into the rented car, started the engine, and didn’t look back. As she drove down the narrow country road toward the highway, the temple became smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. Empty. Abandoned.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” the voice in her head whispered.

  “The High Sorcerer is dead. I saw what remained of his body,” said Valentina out loud. “But what about the others?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about Dante and my parents?”

  The voice was silent for a few long minutes, and Valentina focused on the road. Her body was still as tense as a bowstring, but at least she could breathe more easily.

  “So, you’re back on my side?” she asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  The birth mark on her ribs burned like the fires of hell.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Valentina thought she’d feel the need to tell Piper everything once she reached the Bed & Breakfast, but when she saw her best friend on the small terrace of their room, sipping black tea and enjoying the view, she couldn’t.

  “You’re back! Thank God! What happened? You look... not so good.” She wanted to say awful, but stopped herself in time.

  “I need a bath.”

  Piper raised her mug. “Tea?”

  “Later.”

  Valentina went into the bathroom, turned the water on, then removed her clothes one by one. Her entire body was aching. She could barely lift her arms without wincing from the sharp pain in her shoulder joints. Drawing sigils and throwing energy spheres at lightning speed could prove to be quite the workout. She placed her tarot deck on the edge of the sink, along with the jar of ashes. Before slipping into the hot water, she squeezed out the two mini shower gel bottles the B&B provided, only to be disappointed when they failed to produce the foam she was expecting. Nonetheless, the shower gel smelled fruity, so at least that was a win. She relaxed, closed her eyes, and tried to stop her thoughts from racing. It was hard, but if she focused even harder, she could do it. Shut her mind down. When it didn’t quite work, she snapped her eyes open, cursed under her breath, then drew a couple of healing sigils in the air and pushed them inside her own body. Instantly, her muscles relaxed as the pain and ache of the battle vanished as if by magic. Well, not magic, but witchcraft. Close enough.

  It was dark and the water had turned cold when Valentina finally willed herself to get out of the tub. She was surprised Piper hadn’t come to make sure she hadn’t drowned, but then she had to admit that her friend was pretty good at reading her and figuring out when she needed time alone. This wouldn’t be the first time Valentina wondered whether her Piper could be an empath.

  “I’m starving!” Pip
er pushed the Menu into Val’s hand the second she stepped out of the bathroom. “I know what I want. Let’s order before the kitchen closes.”

  Half an hour later, they were having dinner at the small, round table on the terrace. It was chilly, but they preferred to dress more warmly rather than eat inside. It would have been such a shame to miss the beauty of the small village at night, with its lights rivaling the stars, and the mountain peaks guarding it from afar.

  “It’s nice here,” Piper said. “Thank you.”

  Valentina cocked an eyebrow. “For what?”

  “For taking me with you. I mean... I know this is not a vacation, but still. I would’ve never seen Europe if it weren’t for you.”

  Val chuckled darkly and whispered under her breath: “You might just see more than Europe...”

  “What?”

  “I said...” She hesitated. Looking into Piper’s brown, doe eyes, she hated herself for what she was going to ask of her next. “It’s not over. Something happened at the temple, and I don’t think Italy is our last stop.”

  Piper set her fork and knife down and pushed the empty plate aside. Deep down, she had expected it. Valentina started talking, and she was all eyes and ears. By the end of the story, she had even more questions than before.

  “Wait. I don’t get it. So, certain creatures, like the manticore and the mermaid, can’t travel through dimensions. Why?”

  “Because they’re one-dimensional. They are born in the fourth dimension, and they live there until they evolve and become multi-dimensional.”

  “And then they can cross dimensions?”

  “Not really. They get to reincarnate into beings who are multi-dimensional. Like humans.”

  “Oh.” Piper thought long and hard for a minute. “Are you saying that I might have been a mermaid before being human?”

  Valentina laughed. “Of course that’s the first thing to worry about!”

  Piper smiled and shrugged. “Okay, okay. So, humans are multi-dimensional, we are born and live in the third dimension, but we can travel to other dimensions? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t remember traveling anywhere but... well... around.” She spread her arms to show she was talking about the Earth in general.

  “Dreams. That’s one way of crossing to other dimensions.”

  “Really?!”

  “Yeah. We all do it all the time, but few of us are aware of it or can do it voluntarily. Powerful witches can. Aside from dreaming, I only did it once, but I was... err... assisted by a bunch of herbs.”

  “I never took you for a smoker.”

  “No, not like that. When witches take the Test to become Keepers, the High Keeper burns a mix of herbs to induce an altered state of consciousness. That’s how you pass the Test... You travel through various dimensions, meet the original archetypes of the cards, and each card of your suit has something like a mini test for you to pass, so you can move on to the next. And so on, until you reach the King.”

  Piper waved her off. “That’s fascinating, but I can barely keep up. So, the manticore and the mermaid weren’t supposed to be here. But they were. And you fought them. But you weren’t alone. Someone helped you. Who do you think these other beings were? Could they have been from the fourth dimension, too?”

  Valentina shook her head. She was silent for a minute, poking at her unfinished food and avoiding Piper’s gaze. How could she tell her? She felt herself blush just thinking about it.

  “Val? I see those cogs turning inside your skull.”

  Valentina sighed, crossed her arms over her chest, and finally looked up at her friend.

  “I don’t know who they were, but I have this intense feeling that I’ve met them before. Seen them, even. Touched them?” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I got a strong masculine vibe when they helped me defeat the smoke being. They reminded me of... I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple. “It keeps eluding me. It’s like a memory buried so deep that I can only access glimpses of it.”

  “Memory? You’re losing me here.”

  Valentina leaned forward, her elbows on the edge of the table. “I’ve been dreaming a lot lately, too. I keep running into this... guy who asks me something over and over, and I just don’t get it. I don’t know what it means, what he wants from me, who he is... If I astral project, he’s there, if I lucid dream, there’s a good chance he’s there, too. And today... I felt like one of the... err... men who helped me was him.”

  “Hm. I have an idea.”

  Val smiled bitterly and shook her head. “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Of course you do! Just do a reading for yourself! Ask the cards who this guy is!”

  “I don’t know...”

  “Come on! You have this awesome gift, and since you told me that you’re a witch and all, I’ve never seen you do a tarot reading for yourself.”

  Val stood up and started pacing the terrace. There wasn’t much space to pace, but it was better than nothing.

  “It’s different for a witch,” she said. “I mean, not different... What the cards do is to take a look into your subconscious, into that part of yourself that you’re not aware of, and bring those things into the light. Let’s just say... witches have more inner demons than normal people. I’m not ready to go there just to find out who this guy is. Not now. Not when the Major Arcana and the whole Tarot is in danger.”

  “Okay, okay. I can understand that. But can you, at least, use it predictively? Like... don’t ask a personal question. Just ask what you’re supposed to do next. You saved the Spades, you have the Trionfi Scuri, and now the Trionfi Chiari are... no more. You’re freaking out, Val! But you’re a witch, and the toughest person I know. Just be a witch! Witch your way out of it, if you know what I mean.”

  Valentina turned to look into Piper’s eyes. “How am I so lucky?”

  Piper blushed slightly. “Lucky?”

  “Yes, I’m so lucky that I have you, Pipes. I love you so much!”

  The blonde cleared her throat and murmured: “Yeah... right back at you...”

  But Valentina wasn’t paying attention to her anymore; not enough to catch the subtleties in her reaction. She cleared the table, took out her deck, and started shuffling.

  “I can charge the cards to tell me what to do next, where to go, whom to talk to,” she explained while drawing a sigil above the deck and pushing it in. “I don’t like doing this a lot because it kind of makes you dependent on the cards and takes your power away from you, but this is a special situation. I followed protocol, and look where it got us.”

  “I had no idea you can become dependent on the tarot.”

  “You can become addicted to anything,” Val shrugged. “Look for answers outside of yourself, and then you’re no longer in charge of your own life. But that’s just an extreme. Don’t worry about it.”

  She drew a few cards and placed them on the table, face up, then simply looked at them for a while, taking in the general meaning.

  “It seems we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” she said. “There’s a place here, in this village... I’m not sure what it is. Old, isolated, cluttered. I think it has a lot to do with knowledge. Books, maybe?” She picked up the Hermit card and studied it long, then tapped the Six of Swords, which had also come up in the reading. The man in the card stopped rowing his boat and turned to her. He was in his mid-forties, with wide shoulders and big hands, and thin wrinkles around his eyes. “Can you find out where the Hermit’s lamp is showing us to go?”

  The boatman smirked. “Sure. I’m going to need a map, though.”

  “I got it!” Piper jumped to her feet and went to retrieve the map from her backpack. “But this won’t do...” She said as she spread it on the table.

  The boatman rolled his eyes as he stepped out of the Six. “Just hand me your phone, Keeper.” Standing up, he was slightly taller than Val.

  “He knows how to use a phone?!”

  Val
entina was just as surprised as Piper. She guesses she still had a lot to learn about the original cards.

  The man zoomed in on Castelluccio on the digital map, grabbed the Hermit card from Val’s hand, and placed the phone’s camera over the lamp. Magically, the map started zooming in even more, browsing over streets and alleys, until the pin stopped on a small, secluded, almost hidden building.

  “There,” the boatman said. “It’s still open.”

  “At this hour?” Valentina took the phone from him before he stepped back into his card. “It’s almost midnight.”

  Piper didn’t care much for logic, though. She was already putting on her hoodie.

  “So, where are we going?”

  “Err... an antique shop? It doesn’t have a name, really. It just says the Antiquarian. Maybe that’s the name? It’s within walking distance.”

  “Great! Let’s do some midnight tourism!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The streets of Castelluccio were empty and the houses were quiet, with their old wood shutters closed. As they walked down a narrow alley that led into a small piazza, Valentina and Piper felt like they were in a ghost village. During the day, it brimmed with life. But at night, it was as if both locals and tourists vanished behind the heavy doors of the brick houses never to be seen again. Well... not until morning, when the bells of the old church perched up on the hill woke everyone up.

  They walked down winding alleys, phone in hand, careful not to lose their way. Piper had snuggled against Valentina’s side, both her hands wrapped around her arm. The air was even chillier than before, and its crisp freshness took her throat and lungs by surprise every time she breathed in. Piper wasn’t sure whether it was pleasant, or it was becoming too much and would result in a cold. Who caught a cold in summer, anyway?