The October Trilogy Complete Box Set

by Heather Killough-Walden

But she would never have the chance to be truly free of Samhain – not without that sacrifice. The magic required was simply too strong.

  Blood. It always came down to blood.

  It was the source of a heart’s beating, like a waterwheel that would not turn without the stream’s touch. Blood was as necessary for the passage of real, true, deep magic as were the words spoken that brought it at last to life.

  So Ciara held on. She waited, despite Faolan’s limp form beside her, despite the quiet in the distance that had once been screams, despite the very slowly rising smell of rotting flesh that rolled languidly across the hills.

  She needed a fresh body, a fresh soul. New blood. She needed this to finish her spell… or all would be for naught.

  So against all odds, against the magnetic pull of Samhain’s welcoming, waiting arms, Ciara held on.

  For blood.

  *****

  A few of them had survived. A handful. But as he found them, Leontius dealt with them quickly, ending their suffering as would have been expected of an honorable victor.

  Somewhere over the next rise, Maxentius was doing the same, though Leontius knew the other soldier would stop and bend down first to rid the bodies of anything of value before he finished them off.

  Leontius dug into the pouch he had tied to his belt and extracted the small tin of ointment he always carried for this task. The day had grown warm, the insects had settled into fallen flesh, and the stench was beginning to rise. Leontius dabbed his fingers into the ointment and smeared it across his upper lip. Its heady scent of mint and other herbs would help him get through the day.

  Over one rise, Leontius found the body of a young woman, her dress pushed up around her head, her body destroyed. They’d used a blade on her when they’d finished with her. Or perhaps during. Leontius knew of a few soldiers who would do such a thing.

  Leontius adjusted the deceased’s clothing, pulling it down to cover the woman’s remains. It stuck momentarily on the copious, sticky and blackening blood, but he managed it. Then he marked the location of the body and moved on. Twenty-nine so far.

  The fog earlier that morning had left the bodies damp, and clinging grass now pushed itself between Leontius’s toes through his sandals. He hated it here. He preferred the dry sand he’d left behind when he’d had this task in the desert. But you went where you were ordered to go – and this was where he was needed right now. At least here, the bodies remained cold long enough that bloating was postponed slightly. The stench was bad, but not overwhelming.

  Paulinus had left a trail of dead in his wake. Leontius knew this verity first hand. He had to deal with every last one of the defeated. It was his duty to locate them where they lay, finish them off if Pluto had not yet claimed them, and bury them. Shallow and packed graves they were, but at least they were graves. Not like further south, where Rome’s innocent enemies had been erected upon crosses, the skyline of wooden structures and decomposing flesh left as a grisly testament to Roman victory.

  Leontius had reached a dead count of thirty-four when he happened upon a victim who was still alive. She was lying at the center of a circle of raised stones that resembled the grave stones of some cultures. Other bodies lay around her, placed there in death as if they’d gathered around her in life. A man knelt beside her, his body held aloft by the spear that ran through his chest and embedded itself in the ground.

  The woman had once been very beautiful; Leontius was not so proud that he would deny her beauty due to her lineage. Long golden locks spilled across the earth in thick waves. Her face was pale, her parched lips parted, her eyelashes so long, they brushed the tops of cheeks he imagined had once held exquisite rosiness.

  Her robes were soaked in blood from a wound that looked to be the worst, and yet possibly the oldest of the mortal wounds in this small group of gatherers. She should have been the first to die. However, her chest rose and fell – only slightly. Just enough.

  She’d held on. Why?

  Her eyes fluttered, and Leontius found himself gazing into orbs the color of honey. They locked on to him, seemed to focus, and then her lips moved. No sound escaped them.

  Leontius found himself kneeling on the blood-drenched ground beside her and leaning forward, suddenly and inexplicably eager to hear what it was she had to say.

  “I… waited for you,” she whispered. Her voice was like the softest sigh, the most desperate and final breath of last, living air. Suddenly she reached up, and like lightning, her sticky, blood-stained fingers were grasping his wrist.

  Leontius froze, unable to pull back. It wasn’t her grip on him that kept him immobile. He was trapped in the hold of something more powerful than he was – more powerful than everything was.

  Before his eyes flashed stars that opened up and became glowing circles, windows that afforded him views into other places and times.

  Through these windows, he saw things. He stared wide-eyed and speechless as arched stones stretched in rows before him, the weathered landscape filled with rain-beaten monuments bearing faded carvings of names and dates. A graveyard.

  He began to fly over the cemetery, floating over the landscape as if torn from his body. As he passed over every eternal resting place, he felt the pain of each last heartbeat and heard every cry of anguish for lost love and family. He experienced every death throughout each age and time as if it were his own.

  Tears streamed unchecked down his face as another star opened up, becoming a second window into another world. Through this, he saw hills covered in crosses and rotting corpses. He heard weeping, felt thirsty, and understood the agony of despair. A loss of hope.

  A third window took him to a terrible, dark place where dungeons were filled with puddles of blood and instruments of unimaginable torture never dried of it. Women were filed in, defiled, and slowly torn apart by the malefic surgeries of self-righteous, bored, and power-hungry inquisitors. As old as sixty, as young as eight… younger still. Little girls, innocent and new and trusting.

  Witches, they were called.

  Wise woman, he thought dimly as tears continued to flood his cheeks. Witch means wise woman.

  Leontius passed through window after window. He flew over fences made of barbed steel that sectioned off land filled with skeletal prisoners who were beaten and shuffled into massive chambers filled with poisonous fumes and then tossed into mass graves.

  He soared over countless battlefields, jungles mottled with terrible exploding traps and mangled bodies. Finally, he floated over an entire city that had been melted and evaporated by some truly hellish weapon of incredible proportions.

  They were all images of truth, taken from the lines of time both past and future, and tossed before his eyes like a patchwork quilt of proof. Evidence of human failings.

  Images of death.

  I will end this now, said the bard – for Leontius now understood this was what she was, this woman who had been wounded first but had held on until the last. I’m sorry, she told him, but you had to be made to understand.

  And he did understand. He understood that he’d been shown these things so that he would comprehend – and have empathy. It was necessary, so that the bard before him would have to make a choice: His life – his good, empathetic soul – in exchange for hers. That was the heart of sacrifice.

  She made the choice, and ironically, his freshly empathetic spirit could not blame her.

  Thank you, she told him with all of her barely beating heart. You’ve given me a chance to escape an eternity beside the lord of the lost and lonely.

  Leontius heard her voice, whispered through his soul and spirit, but did not fully comprehend her words. The lord of the lost?

  Yes, she said, the Lord of the Dead. And then, with terrified deference, she added, Samhain. For he has chosen my hand.

  Leontius floated through the final window she showed him and flew over the hills he had just physically walked across – the ones that were this morning dotted with the fallen victims of a merciless Roman ar
my.

  Samhain, he repeated. And he understood that these hills, too, were death’s domain.

  He saw himself kneeling in a circle of stones beside the fallen body of the bard who had chosen him as her sacrifice. Like returning to wakefulness from a dream, he descended into his corporeal form and opened his real eyes once again.

  He was kneeling beside the fallen bard, his knees and clothes soaking in her spilled blood as she firmly held his wrist in a death grip. He looked down at the hand that grasped him.

  He saw the symbols hastily scrawled across the back of it – across the backs of both hands – and then noticed more that climbed up her arms, their angles and dots blending with the rest of her blood. They were everywhere. Words written in blood.

  They were the words of a spell that had traversed time and space. They would be his undoing. But now he knew it didn’t matter. After what Paulinus had done to her and to her people, this was the least Leontius could afford her. His soul for hers.

  Somewhere – somewhere far, far away, and somewhere all too close by, someone else saw those symbols as well, and he knew what they meant.

  Anger.

  That was what brushed against Leontius just then. It was an anger so strong, it filled the air with a flash of sharp heat. It was Samhain, furious over what his intended bride was doing.

  In the next moment, the field around the circle of stones erupted. The leaves from the ground and trees exploded into the sky, the ground shook, and the bark of nearby trees split as something akin to lightning shot through the clearing, fracturing it like so much glass.

  Still, the bard held to him, her fingers clutched tight as the last of her magic spell brought itself to fruition.

  Leontius had no bearings. He tried to cover his eyes, cover his ears, but he could not even find his hands to do so. He was spinning end-over-end, tumbling out of the clearing and into darkness.

  I’m sorry, he heard her say once more. And Thank you.

  *****

  The bard’s words whispered through the passages of time and space, drawing powerful magic from their worn and weathered bricks and mortar, calling to the corners of eternity’s endless labyrinths.

  And the spell was set in motion….

  Chapter One

  Modern Day….

  How dare you. Dominic fumed and hissed the words. He could neither believe nor contain his fury at the sensations in his right hand. That was the hand he had used to hit Logan. That pain was by far worse than the throb across his midsection, where Logan’s knife had carved a grisly path through flesh, muscle, and bone. It was worse because it was Logan’s pain too.

  The portal had been closing, and Logan had been struggling. Samhain was still inhabiting Dom’s body and Dom had felt Sam’s panic swell inside, especially when she’d actually lashed out at him with her weapon. Dom recalled her words just before striking. “I’m sorry Dominic!”

  She’d known he would hear her. She’d had to make a decision. It was the one he would have chosen for her. It was the right decision.

  And yet, Samhain had still won. The Lord of the Dead had paid little heed to the wound she’d given him, save to marvel at her willingness to continue fighting him. Then, driven by the anxiety of the closing portal and his swiftly dwindling chance at having Logan to himself, he’d slammed the back of his knuckles against Logan’s face, knocking her out cold.

  Now Dominic called him out. He railed like mad at the unseen death lord. Pain etched through his borrowed – stolen – body, but his fury fueled him as nothing else ever had.

  This time, no matter how loudly Dominic bellowed, Sam did not reply. The powerful king remained strangely silent, as if he were as shocked by his actions as Dominic.

  Never, thought Dom. Never in a million years would he have hit a woman, not of his own volition. It was despicable. Especially when it came to Logan.

  Samhain had demonically possessed his body for days. The Lord of the Dead had forced his insidious way into his bloodstream, taking up residence alongside Dominic’s own soul. He’d thrust poisonous words through Dominic’s lips, enticed and tricked Logan left and right by pretending to be Dominic, and now he’d dragged her unknowing body through some kind of portal.

  The magical doorway still spun and melted and swirled around Dom; he could see it blurring on the edges as if it had gelled and the colors were running into each other. He felt a pulling on his skin and a pressure behind his eyes, and he knew it was perhaps one of the most significant things he would ever experience in his lifetime, but barely cared. All that was important was that this portal was probably his only chance.

  It was now or never. Now was when he had to get Samhain out of his body – now, when the dark king was distracted with the portal and with what he’d just done to Logan.

  Dom pulled his own soul closer. It was like reaching out with invisible arms and hugging mists together until they coalesced into something halfway solid. With this condensed spirit backing him up, and his fury fueling him, he roared into the confines of his bodily prison. Get out! he bellowed at last, his sheer force of will thrusting madly at the Lord of the Dead.

  GET OUT!

  He shoved outward, expanding into every space he could wrestle himself into, every shadow and crevice and corner that was originally his. He claimed it back. And finally, he felt Samhain’s intrusion back away, peeled off like a stubborn piece of tape, and sent hurtling into the winds of fortune and the twisted chaos of the shifting portal.

  He knew the very instant that he was free of him, and it was a terrifying and liberating heartbeat of time. His own essence crashed back into himself, as bracing as a bucket of ice water, but as disorienting as waking up in the seventh hotel room during a trip and not knowing where the hell you were.

  He cried out as the magic of the doorway pulled at him with more force, left to its own incredible volition when no longer having to fight against a being with equal amounts of power. He gritted his teeth and drowned in a new tidal wave of terror when he realized that without Samhain’s magic, the wound he’d sustained by Logan’s knife might not heal.

  The world was now only dealing with a mere human – and it wanted to rip that human limb from limb.

  He was suddenly disoriented and sick, his arms and legs both on fire and numb at the same time, his stomach churning maddeningly. He tried to look down, to be certain that at least Logan was still grasped firmly in his arms, but he couldn’t control his body, and couldn’t see through his eyes any longer anyway.

  And then, just as suddenly as its power had come in at him, the portal’s influence was receding – and he was falling. Fast.

  *****

  There was damp under Logan’s cheek. It was gritty and cold, but it smelled like freshly fallen rain, which blunted the unpleasantness a bit. Her lids were heavy, and there was a bitter taste on her tongue like metal and lemon. Her head hurt, as did the side of her neck.

  She felt bruised on the surface, and sore beneath, as if she’d worked out too hard at the school gym. Slowly, she levered her heavy eyes open, pulling on them like she was lifting a heavy red curtain at the beginning of a play. As she did, she fought the frightening urge to slip into sleep once more. There was something wrong with her body. It was too heavy, from her eyes to her toes.

  But memories were fleeting and flitting, like fireflies on a humid night. She grasped at them clumsily, inefficiently.

  Think, she told herself. Figure this out.

  Her eyes opened on a reluctant, blurry world. As she blinked, attempting to re-focus, she strained to listen. The cool air against her skin and the fresh smell in her nostrils helped, clearing her throbbing head enough for her to at least concentrate.

  The last thing she remembered, she’d been fighting with Samhain and the portal had been closing. Katelyn had been there… with the car. Everything was crazy. Everyone was struggling. She’d been… she had a knife in her hand, and she’d been brandishing it toward Sam, desperate to just be free of him and his threa
t of death.

  She’d injured him. In fact, she closed her eyes and saw a flash of red, recalling that her blade had sliced deep.

  “Dominic,” she whispered. Her voice came out scratchy, and her throat hurt worse. Instinctively, she raised her hand to her neck, feeling the slightly raised wounds his teeth had left in the side of her throat.

  He’d bitten her.

  She’d cut him.

  And then he’d hit her.

  Logan’s vision focused. All of her thoughts coalesced and clarified into crystal awareness. Anger spewed venom-like adrenaline into her veins. Bastard. Her fury was not only for what he’d done to her, but for what he’d forced her to do to Dominic.

  He’ll survive, she told herself firmly. If Sam was still tucked away inside him, his magic would heal the wound. In the meantime, she had to figure out where she was.

  She looked around.

  She had to figure out where Sam was too, and why she was now sitting up completely alone in a small wooded clearing with not another soul in sight. How had they been separated?

  The light from a late afternoon sun was shafting through treetops far overhead. The leaves on the trees were a rainbow of fall hues, from yellow-green to bright gold to ruby-red and deep purple. They danced in a very slight breeze. Logan inhaled slowly, noticing the faint scent of cinnamon and what smelled like pumpkin pie.

  The air was cool. It wasn’t cold, but there was the promise of cold along its edges, crisp and fresh and new. There was something else there too.

  Logan ran her hand over her face as the last of her headache receded and slipped away. She sat up a little straighter, taking stock of herself. She was still dressed in the same clothes, but they seemed newer somehow. They were cleaner, fresher, even softer against her skin. A small comfort, but unexpectedly nice.

  Her hair fell over her shoulders in untangled, shining waves. Her hands were free from the blood that had caked them when she’d injured Sam. Her fingernails were clean. And now she recognized the scent on the gentle breeze. It was cinnamon – and spice. Hearth fire and Autumn. There was something in the air that felt like possibilities. New chances. It felt like magic.