The October Trilogy Complete Box Set

by Heather Killough-Walden

  This is October Land.

  She realized her location just as she heard the crunching of a footstep somewhere in the line of trees past the clearing’s edge. She froze, at once uncertain.

  It might be Dom, she thought hopefully.

  And then she remembered that Dominic was Samhain.

  Chapter Two

  Dominic came awake with that dull, miserable sensation of being assaulted by pain but not yet knowing exactly where the pain was. He forced his eyes open to a blurry world filled with obscurely defined colors. There was a bit of a bite to the air, and dryness in his mouth. He could sense damp and cold against the side of his head.

  He tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t move. That was when he inhaled the scent of wet earth and realized he was on the ground, on his side.

  The pain was clear now, emanating from every joint in his body. It was like he’d been grabbed by the shirt collar and tossed around like a ragdoll by some angry giant. That was how he felt. Violently shaken.

  The portal had dropped him. Without any magic to guide where it started and stopped, it had simply opened up and thrown him out like Tuesday’s trash. He’d gone sailing, nothing solid to grab on to, and it had felt like forever.

  And then he’d hit the ground.

  Now he made an involuntary low groaning sound and attempted to push up from the dirt. His muscles strained and his fingers brushed fallen leaves that scraped beneath his touch, shuffling into a small pile as he struggled to sit up. The pain in his body coalesced, pulling in from his joints to focus on an area across his chest.

  Oh no, the knife, his thoughts flashed. Fear pumped his heart harder as he realized he may have been separated from Sam before the wound was healed. He glanced down, expecting to see a red streak and sliced shirt. But his shirt was whole and there was no blood anywhere. In fact, he looked as though he’d been thrown into a washing machine with a quart of Tide.

  He lifted his shirt to look at his midsection. A thick, red and puffy scar ran new and fresh from his upper right ribs to just beneath his left ribs. There existed significant purple, red, and green bruising around the wound, and the area also looked slightly swollen.

  Half way, he thought, and he experienced a flood of mind-numbing relief. It’s half way healed. Dom hated Samhain, but was admittedly immensely grateful Sam had been in his body long enough to keep him from dying.

  He dropped his shirt, managed to get his back up against a nearby tree trunk, and closed his eyes again, gently touching his throbbing forehead. He felt disoriented and a little sick. His mind spun; he was cold and in pain. But he wasn’t the only one the portal had thrown about. Logan had been in his arms before he’d been sent hurtling through space, and now she was gone.

  You have to think, he commanded. What could the portal have done with her? She was as human as he was, so it would have done the same thing to her that it had done to him. Right? It would have thrown her out.

  She must be here somewhere. Somewhere nearby.

  He forced his pain to a back burner and focused on her alone, slowly maneuvering himself up along the tree’s trunk until he was standing. His head instantly punished him for the effort. But he took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth, and then did it again. Slowly, the pain receded and his vision cleared.

  He swore internally as he breathed. I must have some kind of mild concussion. There was nothing he could do about it, though. And even if he were home, there wouldn’t be anything anyone could do about it. The medical field had not yet advanced enough to deal with bumps on the head.

  Dominic dropped his hand, opened his eyes, and glanced around.

  Where is she?

  There was still a hint of blur around the edges of his sight, but for the most part, he could now see. He was standing beside a tree in a dense, beautiful forest. Leaves of multi-hued amber littered the ground. The sky through the tree-tops was a purple-blue color, vivid in a late-afternoon sun.

  Dominic turned in a slow circle, ignoring the arc of pain that shot from the base of his skull to his right eye.

  There was no sign of Logan.

  And then, just as he was thinking this and feeling the stirrings of a cold, hard desperation, he heard the softest, most indistinct sound. It was muffled, but he could have sworn it was a groan. Maybe? And yes! There was what sounded like movement in the leaf carpet along the ground.

  Dominic froze and listened for all he was worth. He waited, hoping the sound would come again. Blood rushed through his eardrums, threatening to drown out all other sound. He swallowed, and the noise was disturbingly audible. He held his breath.

  He was rewarded for his efforts when the sound came again. It was definitely movement, displacing leaves that hiss-crackled as they were brushed aside. It was distant and barely audible, but unmistakable.

  Dominic moved away from the tree and headed in the direction of the sound. Every two steps, he paused and waited to hear more, but all was frustratingly silent in the forest now. “Logan!” he called, hoping he wasn’t making a grave mistake in giving himself away.

  There was no reply. He tried again. “Logan! It’s me! It’s Dominic!”

  Nothing.

  He moved faster. It was easy; the leaves of the trees were not at eye level and nothing needed to be knocked away to get through the underbrush. The branches were instead high overhead, as if someone had taken Redwoods and crossed them with the color-changing leaves of deciduous trees. The effect was stunning, though he imagined a bit of it was lost on him just then.

  Just when he was beginning to believe he’d gone the wrong way, he saw a flash of bluish gray amidst the orange and yellow of the fallen leaves on the ground. He ran toward it, now more certain as he drew closer.

  Logan!

  She was laying on her side, unmoving and clearly unconscious. Her long golden hair spilled out in a thick cascade of shimmering honey across the blanket of leaves beneath her. The ground had been disturbed a bit in front of her; as Dominic skidded to a halt and knelt, he realized she must have awoken momentarily, just enough to stir a bit and then pass out once more.

  “Logan?” he whispered softly, leaning forward just a little. He was sort of afraid to touch her. From where he was sitting, she seemed relatively unharmed.

  He knew he’d bitten her. He remembered that all too well…. It had awakened a cruel dichotomy of emotions within him, for it was not only Samhain who enjoyed the feeling of Logan trapped in his arms, her flesh against his lips, her throat trapped in his teeth.

  Dom closed his eyes and clenched his fists, schooling himself. When he opened them again, he could see the remnants of the bite marks on the side of her throat. But Sam’s wicked sharp teeth had stopped just short of piercing anything vital, and the wounds looked shallow, if a bit raw.

  He’d hit her hard, though. His knuckles had actually throbbed after that terrible impact. And if he’d caused some kind of brain damage – he felt cold at the thought – those particular wounds would be invisible to the naked eye.

  “Logan,” he said again, a little less softly now.

  But she still didn’t respond, or even move. Her long eyelashes rested unmoving against the top of her cheek, which was rosy in the nippy air. He raised his hand, bringing his fingers to her forehead. A long lock of her hair had fallen over it. He was about to brush it aside when there was a sudden explosion of movement.

  Logan rose, spinning on the ground as she did so. The last thing Dominic saw was a flash of flying gold hair and the bottom of her leather-soled boot as its heel made its formidable way to his chin.

  Chapter Three

  I’ve escaped you once more.

  There is still time. A promise is a promise.

  It was a promise I never made.

  There was a pause as Sam digested this, not fully willing to admit that it was true.

  When did you figure it out, Sam?

  That she is you? He thought of the way he’d felt as Logan had been ripped from his arms
in the portal. He’d realized, only then in that moment, that he’d felt that exact same despair once before.

  Only now, he said.

  He hesitated, alone in the mists between October Land and the Realm of the Dead – but not alone. She was there. At least, a part of her was.

  I claimed you eons ago, he told her. You should have been mine then.

  But I claimed another, she returned, her beautiful voice as light and yet as powerful as were the words she’d once written. And he and I claimed each other.

  Sam knew who she was talking about. Some mortal she had fallen in love with, a man who had died beside her when the Romans attacked.

  You can’t be with him either, Sam challenged. The spell Ciara had cast thousands of years ago to escape him had not only kept her from Sam, it had kept her out of his realm altogether. And that had prevented her from being with the man she professed she loved.

  He’s only a boy, he told her, thinking that the boy and Dominic Maldovan had much in common.

  Everyone is a child to you, Sam.

  He paused again, closing eyes he didn’t have, and felt the torn emotions of a man who loved the sound of a woman’s voice, but hated what she was saying. Because it was true.

  He was disembodied now, an incorporeal form once more in need of substance. Dominic had succeeded in taking back his body, leaving Samhain without arms and legs and the feel of human flesh. But he was still more than he’d been in his own realm. The magic Logan had given him with her words had not completely left him. He had power.

  Do you think you will be happy with a queen who does not love you?

  It was the question he had been desperately hoping she wouldn’t ask. But it was the one he knew she would.

  Time changes everything, he told her.

  It hasn’t changed this.

  On the day that she’d been born, in his month of October, he’d paused on his throne and straightened. He’d felt something.

  It had literally been forever since he’d felt anything at all. His world was a realm of memories. He had around him the after-images of each person’s life, like flashes of sepia over black and white. There was no future, no present, only the past.

  And yet, this little bard had brought color to Samhain’s aging world. There was a bond between magic and Samhain. Magic was nothing but the mass of infinite possibilities – just like death, just like those breathless moments when an infant is still trapped in that nothingness of death before a mother screams and the baby draws its first breath and wails, and the world rejoices in a newborn life.

  So when Ciara was born, Sam knew it. But this time, he more than knew it. It was like coming awake, like seeing the beginnings of a masterpiece.

  Like being born.

  And he had fallen in love.

  That love was as strong in this moment, millennia later, as it had been then. But now, Ciara was just as incorporeal as he was, and even less so because she’d split her spirit into two with her last breathing spell.

  Only a whole spirit could enter the Land of the Dead.

  In Fall Fields, the portal would open and take whole spirits into Sam’s realm. There, they joined others they had loved and lost. It was a final resting place, together at last, an exhalation like the period at the end of a very long sentence.

  Spirits with unfinished business, however, were kept at bay by the forces of the in-between and could not enter the portal. Almost always, these spirits were torn in twain, ripped apart by the dichotomy of forces placed upon their souls. They yet wanted to live. But the fates had brought them death.

  They were torn between this world and the one they’d left behind. They were haunts, poltergeists, or spectres.

  They were ghosts.

  This is what Ciara had done to herself to escape Samhain and the throne he’d prepared for her. She’d used the last of her mortal existence and sacrificed another in order to complete her spell.

  She’d turned herself into a ghost.

  She was prevented from entering the Land of the Dead, no matter what he did. And the other half of her spirit? Sam was now realizing that this was where resided the true beauty of her spell. It was no poltergeist or remnant. Instead, it was Logan.

  Now he knew why she possessed such an old soul.

  Time did change a lot of things. But the essence of a person, it could not touch. So Ciara was right. It hadn’t changed this.

  But Ciara was also wrong. Logan was undoubtedly more than Ciara had hoped for in a corporeal form. Logan Wright was a bard of immense untapped power, and that power had done for Samhain what Ciara’s companionship never could have. It had brought him to life.

  To life.

  Now he had a new and more thorough understanding of existence. Of what it meant to draw breath, to think with a human mind, to reason and dream and want and lose – even to bleed. With this new understanding, this impossible comprehension, came a renewed and revived sense of tenacity. He was not going to give up what he had been given.

  Ciara might not be corporeal. But Logan was.

  That would do nicely.

  It will, he told her at last. Time will change everything.

  With that, and with a plan in mind, Samhain shot through the last of the parting mists of the barrier and entered his own realm. The King of the Dead had returned.

  Chapter Four

  Dietrich Lehrer glanced one last time at his student. Meagan Stone had her shoulders rolled back, her mass of dark hair pulled into a ponytail, and her backpack firmly strapped to her back. Her hands were free at her sides, prepared to gather magic and hurl it at whatever dangers they encountered. He’d taught her well. He realized, in that moment, that he could be secure in the knowledge that Meagan Stone was officially a witch. She had come full circle and crowned herself a queen. She’d earned her right to use the magic flowing through her veins.

  To the right of Meagan stood her good friend, Katelyn Shanks. Lehrer had always known there was much more to Katelyn than she allowed the world to believe. For the life of him, he would never understand why she hid her intelligence from her classmates and teachers. She had the makings of a polyglot, if she allowed herself to be one. She could be an A student if she cared, but she purposefully “forgot” her assignments and missed the easiest questions on tests. He wondered. Maybe she was a being of such substance, she felt the need to hide it from those around her. Perhaps she felt that her intelligence would push her further away from the rest of the world. And maybe she was right. The world was a rather shallow entity, after all. It never really cared to wade into the deep end of much of anything.

  Katelyn, too, stood at the ready. Her chin was up, her shoulders rolled back, and her eyes were steady on the swirling portal before them.

  Dietrich took a deep breath and looked to his left, where Hugh Draper stood. Draper was the stranger among them, the newcomer. He was a wizard from another time. Having disappeared from the Tower of London hundreds of years ago and reappeared in the here and now – and just in the nick of time to save Meagan and Dietrich, the wizard had decided to stick around and lend further aid wherever he could before once more jumping time. According to Draper, his own grove had cast the time travel spell long ago in the hopes that he would locate a moment in chronology when magic was accepted in the world and witches and wizards were no longer prosecuted. So far, he’d had no luck.

  Draper had been a good sport about “suiting up” for whatever adventures might lay ahead for the four of them in October Land. He’d learned quickly what was what, and taken his cues from the others. Whatever they packed, he packed, and if he didn’t know what something was, he simply asked. It was interesting to Lehrer how quickly the man seemed to adapt to a new time. It was as if he existed outside of each time, and time had no influence on him.

  That was so rare, it seemed a near impossibility. People were a product of their time. The day and age dictated everything to most people. In fact, both Meagan and Katelyn had attempted to pack their iPhones before Dietri
ch reminded them there probably wouldn’t be great reception in October Land.

  Now the four of them stood together before the pulsing portal through which Logan and Dominic Maldovan, possessed by the spirit of Samhain, had disappeared.

  The portal had been opened by Logan, more or less. Before she’d been taken through, she’d written in her own blood the one word that would allow Dietrich, Draper, Meagan, and Katelyn to go through after her. With a raw fingernail, she’d carved “open” into the trunk of a tree. And because she was a bard, it was a powerful word. Meagan, being a witch, had spoken the word out loud, bringing the spell to life.

  “Ready, set, go?” Meagan asked.

  “I would say ‘ladies first,’ however in this particular instance, it may be better to send a man through with priority,” said Draper, a short balding man with twinkling eyes and a crisp, clear voice. “Or better yet, a monster.” He looked at the girls and then looked meaningfully up at Dietrich.

  And once more, Dietrich was reminded of the fact that he was no longer human.

  Hours earlier, he’d had an unfortunate run-in with a Hell Hound. Apparently, the beast’s bite was not your ordinary kind of venomous. Specifically, the venom turned a mortal into a goblin.

  As it turned out, goblins were not the small, green, big-eared creatures with jagged teeth and a mischievous nature that mortal lore would have you believe. They were, in fact, very large, very strong, and very deadly. According to Hugh Draper, who had an amazing amount of knowledge on the magical and mystical, goblins were so dangerous, they had at one time been separated from all the other magical creatures and exiled to live in their own realm, like prisoners sent to an island in the middle of nowhere. There, they were ruled by an equally powerful Fae king.

  Or so the story went.

  All Dietrich knew was that he had been bitten by a Hell Hound, and he was now a goblin. He’d grown at least a foot and a half, his body was covered in fur, his lower incisors had become tusks, and his eyes were glowing. As far as his strength was concerned, it had multiplied twenty-fold. He’d managed to wrestle two vampires into submission and come out of the battle still standing.