Daughter of the Storm

by Tina Callaghan

  He felt like sleeping. There was some pain, but it was distant. She was no longer kissing him but inhaling something of his. His joints ached and his eyes grew dim. He understood. She was taking back the gift she had given him and his body was growing old, too quickly and all at once.

  Darkness began to fill in his vision from the sides and he watched her lovely face through a shrinking window.

  I’m dying. I’m finally dying. It’s all over at last. At last.

  His heart stopped beating. She pressed her cheek to his and he felt the sensation in one last second of mortality before he slipped out of this world and into the next.

  The storm was getting worse. Jasmine had to fight for every step on her way back to the Hall. Whatever power had thrown her out was not going to stop her getting back to her daughter. Halfway there on the narrow road, she suddenly realised that the feelings for Harry that had flooded her were gone. He was once more her husband’s brother who she didn’t really like or trust. There had to be something wrong with a man who would stay on this awful lump of rock.

  She forged on, sopping wet, half blind in the rain. The gusts were so strong that several times she felt herself being lifted as though a giant hand had scooped her up. She stepped off the road and walked along by the stone wall that edged the fields. It was no good as shelter, but it was something solid to lean on when the gusts came.

  After a while, she started to feel disconnected to her body. The physical effort of walking through the storm in the darkness, often falling, had sent her mind into a strange state of near-euphoria. The world shrank to putting one foot in front of the other, but she felt like she was flying above herself. She had never before wanted to kill any creature, but she wanted nothing now except to save her daughter and to kill whatever monster lived in that horrible house.

  Will had saved her from the cave and from the bony, grasping fingers of the dead. He seemed very close to her now, although she couldn’t hear him or see him. She sent out thoughts like swallows to him. Love, sorrow, regret. Love was the swallow who kept returning home, despite storms and serpents, despite deserts and oceans. She had let stupid things get in the way. His temper and restlessness, her own snobby ideas of what life should be like, what he should be like, when all he had ever been was himself.

  If only they could go back to the beginning and erase all the mistakes. If only.

  She almost missed the locked gates of the Hall in the dark and had to backtrack to the broken section of wall. She crunched her way up the long driveway to the house and walked in. The strange diffuse light that hadn’t been visible from outside showed her the scene clearly.

  Lia was standing near Ed. Her clothes were torn and her hair was loose and tangled. There was something wrong with Ed. He turned to look at Jasmine and she saw how cold his eyes were. The rich stormy blue had been replaced by pale gold. He reminded her of a bird of prey she had seen at the zoo.

  She had been refusing to look at the stairs and what was happening there. Lia hadn’t seen her yet but was staring instead at the horrible scene. Jasmine forced herself to look, the tendons in her neck feeling stiff and brittle as she turned her head.

  Harry, looking too much like Will, was in the arms of a woman, a creature. The creature who had stood outside the window of the pub. The Strix. She looked like Lucifer himself, a white angel, beautiful and too proud. She had her mouth pressed against Harry’s lips, but it didn’t look like a kiss.

  Then it was over. The creature dropped Harry to the ground and his body lay there, somehow diminished, crumpled and utterly lifeless. The Strix turned to face Jasmine. What had appeared to be a filmy white dress opened into a huge pair of wings, as white as a swan’s, but there was nothing serene about her face. Instead, she looked sharply curious, hungry and predatory. Jasmine had a moment to imagine that her mind would break if the Strix came for her, before her body yielded. She had walked in the streets of New York all of her life and had seen and experienced danger from other human beings. This was all nothing compared to the way this creature’s cold regard made her feel. She was helpless, a morsel of prey caught out in the open by the hunting owl.

  Then the Strix turned to Lia and Ed.

  Helpless fear fled from Jasmine’s body, replaced by white-hot fury. She started across the wide hall, her foot kicking something hard on the floor, making it skid in front of her.

  The Strix put out a hand and Ed went to her and took the hand. She folded her wings closed and they proceeded up the stairs, elegant and powerful.

  Lia made a guttural noise and started across the hall.

  ‘Lia, no!’

  Lia didn’t hear her.

  ‘Lia!’ Jasmine screamed, running towards her.

  This time Lia stopped, startled, and turned. Jasmine opened her arms to her, but Lia ran for the stairs.

  Jasmine, exhausted though she was, but glad of all the work she had done in the gym, bent to pick up the object she had kicked, and followed her daughter.

  He could hear his heart beating fast. There was something wrong with his blood too. He could feel it inside him and it felt like her. He had lost his ability to see colour but the world was in sharp focus. Even in the dark, he had no trouble seeing, taking in every scrap of light and using it. Under his clothes, his body was changing. He felt so strong and free, except that he was connected to the beauty that was leading him up the stairs. A brief flash of the past had led him to help the girl, but whatever that had been, it was gone.

  They reached the top of the stairs and went down a long corridor with a high arched window at the end. There was a tiny hint of light in the sky. Not yet the end of the storm, but the promise of it. He wasn’t afraid of it, but it made him want to sleep. The night was his and the day no longer interested him.

  They turned into a room near the window and she, his beauty, his love, took him in her arms.

  Lia was running in treacle. It was the nightmare. She wouldn’t reach Ed in time, if indeed there was any time left. Jasmine was behind her but, fit though her mother was, she was exhausted. Lia, even though she still felt she was so slow, held back by the house itself, was halfway down the corridor before her mother was halfway up the stairs. There must have been something wrong with the Hall before the Strix had come. Or the Strix had released the wrongness. Alone out on the edge of an isolated island, it had soaked up the evil of the early settlers, those who had killed for profit. Centuries of victims being fed to her had kept the Hall in the darkness. In her head, Lia could hear her parents shouting at her to get out, to leave Ed, to run before she was taken or killed. She ignored the voices and stopped outside the door near the window.

  She pushed the door open, suddenly apprehensive, and stepped into the room.

  Heat. Ammonia. Rustling. Darkness. Lia, aware that she presented a perfect target in the doorway, moved, pressing her back to the wall, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The room was big, and full of old couches. It had been some sort of sitting room or lounge in its past life. It was dominated by a huge inglenook fireplace, reminding Lia that generations of families had lived here, riding out the winter, or being caught by storms before they could get to safer lodgings on the mainland.

  The fireplace resembled nothing so much as a hollow in a tree. The Strix was in it, her wings fluffed out. She hissed at Lia.

  Ed moved from the corner and stood in front of the Strix.

  ‘Oh, Ed,’ Lia pleaded. ‘What’s happened to you? Don’t you know me?’

  He didn’t answer. Lia went to him. He let her take his hands in hers but his expression didn’t change. She drew him away from the Strix, closer to the door, before he resisted.

  ‘I love you,’ Lia said.

  A tiny frown appeared between his dark brows.

  She said it again. ‘I love you, Ed. You love me too. Try to remember.’

  She put her arms around him and kissed him. His lips were cold but after a moment, he began to kiss her back. His arms came up around her and he held her tightly to him.


  When the kiss ended, he half-turned towards the Strix, confused.

  She rose up and stepped out of the hollow.

  Lia heard a strange noise and her attention was drawn to movement behind the Strix who stretched her wings and hunched, hissing.

  Lia looked past her, trying to decipher the shapes and movement she saw. Then the Strix moved slightly and Lia felt the breath leave her body.

  Ed also moved, putting himself again between Lia and the Strix protectively.

  But Lia had already seen.

  She had young. They were clustered together in the fireplace, fearful and making small sounds of distress. They weren’t like the Strix, or like anything Lia had ever seen. They wore soft grey feathers, but had sweet human faces, missing the sharpness of their mother. Their wings were short, not yet ready for flight.

  ‘Ed,’ Lia said, ‘I don’t want to hurt them. Just please come with me.’

  Ed frowned again and walked over to the window, turning his back on both Lia and the Strix.

  ‘Lia, look out!’ Jasmine’s voice was frantic and furious.

  Lia turned in time to see the crossbow in her mother’s hands, ready to fire. If she screamed the word ‘No!’ aloud, it was drowned by the shriek of the Strix as the metal bolt flew through the air and pierced her white breast. The young screamed then, terrified. Lia instinctively ran towards them, but they hissed at her, extending their stubby wings. Their mother fell against the side of the fireplace.

  Ed crossed the room in a few fast strides and took the Strix in his arms. She was once again a slender girl, easily held, gazing up at him. The bolt stuck out of her, and the feathers on her breast were turning red.

  Everyone went still and silent, no one knowing what to do.

  Then the Strix stood up.

  Corvo woke. Something had changed. The night was fierce and the Strix was free. But the Lilith was intact. He stood at the bow, as the captain, invisible in the dark, guided the ship away from the rocks. The sea rose, carrying the vessel with it. Instead of crashing back from the wave into a trough, the ship was lifted higher and higher. With the wind against her, she still flew along the crest until a great house came into sight, with the first grey light of dawn catching windows like a shine in a cold eye.

  Ah, Corvo thought. It is time.

  There was no sound and no hesitation. The Strix moved fast and took Lia to the ground. As her head plunged towards Lia’s throat, Lia flung her arm up and caught the bite with her wrist. The Strix moved back and looked into Lia’s eyes.

  Then, in the Strix’s eyes, Lia saw Rome from a high vantage point, followed by darkness with no escape. Then a ship and the sea. Then Harry and the others gathered together. Then her young. Then Ed. She’s showing me her life and what matters to her.

  Lia felt a surge of pity for the Strix who had never asked to be brought into this cold place so far from her home. A wave of love filled her heart for the pure creature that had done everything to survive and raise her young.

  Then the Strix smiled and Lia understood how she had made the men desire her and protect her.

  Before the Strix could read her intentions, Lia grabbed the bolt protruding from among the reddened feathers and shoved it deeper. The Strix threw her head back and screamed. A gout of dark blood struck Lia but she had clamped her mouth and eyes tight shut against it. The Strix swayed and fell forward. As if in slow motion, the metal end of the bolt came towards Lia’s chest.

  Ed flung himself between Lia and the Strix. The blunt bolt struck his shoulder, knocking it out of its socket. He voiced a snarl of pain and struggled to push the dead weight of the Strix off him with his good arm. Jasmine rushed forward and hauled the Strix backwards. Relieved of the weight of her body, Ed’s injured arm hung loosely from his dislocated shoulder and he screamed.

  Jasmine dropped the Strix and pulled Lia into her arms. Over her shoulder, Lia saw the young go quiet and slip down in the nest.

  Ed was lying on his side, his face white.

  Lia took her mother’s hand and they went to him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, his voice gruff with pain.

  ‘Hello,’ Lia said, smiling into his dark blue eyes.

  Standing at the bow, Corvo saw the Strix leave the house alone. She had made others but they always died when her body died. As before, the spirit of the mother would live on. While he could, he would pursue her and search for a mortal who would take his place.

  Strange how the world could look changed and yet be the same. The Strix was forever, a thread of blood from world’s beginning to world’s end.

  Twenty-Eight

  Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds … true love?

  Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897

  Jasmine used her scarf to fashion a sling for Ed who had used a painful but effective technique to pop his shoulder back into its socket. Then they went downstairs and out of the house.

  The storm was still violent, although from somewhere behind the clouds a grey light was filtering. Lia clung to Ed on his one good side, while Jasmine wrapped her arms around her. It took a long time to walk even a short distance from the house. Once they were back on the road, they had to hunker down beside the wall to shelter from the vicious gale coming off the sea. The air was full of the booming noises from the blowholes and plumes of foam were flying.

  Lightning crackled all around them, forking continuously. There was a tremendous noise behind them and the wild air smelled sulphurous. Lia peeped over the wall, holding her breath against the wind.

  The Hall was on fire. Lightning had struck. It was ablaze and sinking fast. The wind played with the inferno, spreading it instead of putting it out. Ed and Jasmine joined her and together they watched as the Hall sent the spirits of the lost into the dark sky in the form of smoke and flames. They bore witness to its death, waiting until it finally fell in upon itself, quenching the fire and leaving nothing but destruction and ruin behind. Except for one chimney that had run like a spine through the whole house, standing alone, a mutilated finger pointing blasphemously at the heavens.

  Then, helping each other, they continued on their way. They stopped at the deserted Robin’s Rest and quickly picked up their things. Lia hesitated, but slipped into the kitchen briefly. She looked around and, before she could rethink it, put the little carved robin in her pocket before rejoining the others. They walked into the village where there was both evidence of the storm’s power and of the resilience of the people.

  The Red Door opened to them and they found Mr. and Mrs. Glenn, as well as Matt, Becky and baby Francis, all shaken, but alive and safe. They waited together until it was finally safe to leave the island.

  As the ferry, piloted by someone new, chugged towards the mainland, Lia looked at the remains of the Chimneys, destroyed by the storm, and circled by hundreds of screaming gulls, the great white birds wheeling against the sky.

  The End

  Also by Tina Callaghan

  Dark Wood Dark Water

  Something is wrong with the town of Bailey. Something dark, something dangerous. Something evil.

  Josh's brother has just drowned. He meets Kate and Gabe, who also have lost family to the river. When they seek the help of a local historian, Naylor, he tells them that there is a sinister longstanding pattern to such tragedies.

  But some unknown force is trying to help Josh rid the town of its curse. Why is he dreaming of a ship s captain, a hooded monk, a dark familiar with a knife? What is being demanded of him?

  Soon greater horrors than ever before are set loose. They are fighting against time, as evil has turned its baleful eye upon them.

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