But if it was our magic, the magic of the familiars, we should face it.
I still couldn't shake the feeling that this was a desperate place, a sad place, and terrible things had happened there. Even if it was for a good cause, it was never pleasant to stir up terrible things.
With the island looming closer, I rushed to the kitchen and started making a quick batch of cookies he could take with him. It was a sign of my distraction that I made up all the dough before realizing that he couldn't carry a bag of cookies with him in bat form.
At this thought, I realized he was actually going to that foreboding place all alone, and I sank to my knees, barely holding back tears. I wasn't sure it was worth it to risk Bevan's life just to find the origins of familiars. I abandoned the ingredients and went back to the deck.
"The island..." Bevan came out shortly with binoculars to get a closer look. I could tell he didn't think it looked terrible. "I see the temple! Or something like a temple, anyway. It looks like something from ancient times, with white columns. Wouldn't it be amazing if the cloaks were all there? If they were just lost and forgotten out here in a strange corner of Wyrd?" He glanced at me. "What's wrong, my toadlet? You look scared."
"I'm not as scared with you here." I leaned against him. "But I don't like the thought of you going there alone."
"I'll be fine," he said. "That's why I had to seize these powers. I have so many tools in the toolbox now. If I run into any monsters, well, even if magic doesn't work well, I'm pretty damn strong. I’ll also bring the sea monster with me.”
“About the sea monster…well…he’s way back there.” I pointed behind the ship.
“What? Why didn’t you tell me!?”
“He looked so sad and scared and Variel already bit off one of his heads! It just seemed like it would be so cruel to force him to go!”
Bevan patted my head. “Oh, my star.”
“I know, I know… Just promise me you'll come back safe."
"Always." He put an arm around me, and even though I was a little worried about his demon powers, I was also very glad he was so strong now. He was still my sweet Bevan.
“We’re going to anchor here,” Cash said, coming out to meet us. “Our instruments aren’t working. We’re at the end of it all. Bevan, if you want to turn back—“
“Turn back?” Bevan scoffed. “It’s right there waiting for me. No way would I turn back.” He turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders, then drew me against him, enveloping my small body against his. “I will come back safe. I swear it. So I won’t say any goodbyes or anything.”
I clutched his shirt and pressed my forehead to his chest, breathing in his scent. “Okay.”
Piers and Variel came up to take a look at the island and offer their wishes for a safe journey, Piers telling Bevan to look for this sort of architecture and this kind of writing until the very last moment.
“I’ve got as much stuffed in my head as I’ll ever have,” Bevan said. “But I have a feeling I’ll find what I’m looking for. That’s the place. I just know it is.”
He squeezed me tight one more time and then he transformed and started his flight. It didn’t take long before he was a mere speck against the dark clouds.
Struggling to hold back my fears, I returned to the kitchen to distract myself. At least I could finish the cookies for everyone else.
That was when I heard Bernard's voice, calling me, as if carried on the strange cold wind that leaked through the windows and beams of the ship even though it was sealed so tight.
"Jenny...Jenny...please...come home to me. Please. It's Mother! I'm sorry, Jenny...I know I hurt you!"
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bevan
The flight to the island might have strained me in the past, but I was stronger now than I'd ever been, and I landed on its shores with energy to spare.
I had never been anywhere so dead quiet. The clouds over the island were gray and thick, but they weren't releasing any rain or snow. They tumbled and swirled over themselves in the sky, almost like smoke, or like living things.
Waves lapped at the rocky shores, and the wind howled in the stubby trees that seemed to be hanging onto life. The temple was perched on a mountainous outcropping, a shining white ruin. I could see now that it was shabbier than it looked from afar, with pieces crumbled off of it and cracks in the stone. There was no other sign of life, and the feeling of sadness here hit me like a punch in the stomach.
Ah...this must be what Jenny felt. I guess she's more attuned to this sorrow than I am...
Now I could feel that this was the sorrow of my kind.
This was the place I was searching for. I knew it. The place where the cloaks were kept. Our research was paying off.
Treacherous stone steps, some of them broken and crumbling down onto lower steps, led to the temple. Luckily, I could just fly there.
I fluttered upward, struggling for control against the wind. I tried to use a wind spell, but magic barely worked at all; in fact, magic worked better in the Fixed Plane than it did here. I could transform and that was about it. I had to fight my way to the temple, half-falling from a greater height, clipping a wing against the roof of the building before I managed to gain control in the wind break formed by the building and the trees around it and land without knocking myself out.
Phew.
I transformed back immediately, and got to my feet. My hand was throbbing in one weird spot from my wing clipping the roof, but everything was in order. I couldn't carry anything on me except what I could manifest with magic. It worked well for clothing, less so for weapons, so I glanced around and picked up a sturdy branch. It wasn't hard to find one. The abandoned courtyard leading up to the temple was surrounded by low, windblown trees, and dead branches and fall leaves were scattered around. The courtyard had once had pools of water and landscaping in ornate stone pots, along with a row of twelve freestanding columns leading up to the temple steps. I could guess that this place had once been beautiful, a serene escape from the markets and inns of the mainland of Wyrd. Probably attended by priests or priestesses who kept everything swept and scrubbed.
The stone was grayish up close, and the leaves were caught against the planters and inside the empty remains of the cold pools, moldering in brown piles. One of the columns had collapsed. The ground was cracked, weeds pushing through tiles.
I had barely taken this all in when I started to hear whispering.
It started off like it was part of the wind. Soft and mysterious, barely pricking my ears.
Quickly, the sound began to rise, like it came from the ground itself, growing louder as I walked. I heard a low thrum of many voices. They all seemed to be crying and muttering, and I thought they sounded like people searching for lost things.
Maybe it was just my expectations creeping up on me. Either way, the voices were unhappy and now they were a din I couldn't ignore, but at the same time, I could still hear the wind and the ocean and the silence itself. Like the voices were in my head, and my ears were still free to listen to the emptiness of this place.
Now the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. The stairs to the temple loomed ahead. It was all bigger than it looked from a distance. The columns of the temple stood, eerie and lonely, against the gray sky.
My feet crunched through the leaves. The voices continued, growing louder still. My skin crawled like something was touching me, but whenever I looked, there was nothing there.
I reached the foot of the stairs and announced myself. "My name is Bevan, of the House of Soundhunter. I am here with the hope of helping my people and the entire race of familiars."
A sudden roar came from my left. I turned, lifting the branch and barely managed a swing at a monster that came flying toward me.
I struck the large dog-like creature with the branch and it snapped.
So much for that plan. I pitched the branch aside and as the dog recovered from its brief surprise at the blow and snapped at me, I barely tumbl
ed out of its way.
I tried to blast it with a spell but my magic seemed to fade on the wind.
It had a form rather like a very oversized doberman, but it was shaggy with brown fur, like a wolf. Its teeth were more jagged and long than any dog or wolf I’d ever seen. It looked like some ancient half-domesticated type of canine, which would make sense, considering the age of the temple.
This place felt as saturated with magic as any place I'd ever been, but it wasn't the magic I knew or understood. It wasn't even the Sinistral magic of chaos. It was a heavy, dreary, tired kind of magic. The magic of ancient ghosts and nothing else.
The dog monster didn't give me a single second to catch my breath before in lunged at me again, growling and snapping at my arm with dangerous teeth, and I had to resort right back to the original, trademarked, Bevan Fighting Technique of turning into a bat and flying out of the way.
So much for that strength, huh?
It was no good if I didn’t make use of it. I needed to take this thing out. If I flew to the temple, it would surely follow me, and then I'd be in closer, dimmer quarters.
I flew to the back of the beast and dropped back into man form, grappling it and taking ahold of its scruff, trying to hold the snapping teeth at bay.
I ran my tongue along my own, newly sharpened teeth. I could bite this thing and suck out its soul. But the pleas and warnings of Jenny and Piers flashed through my mind. I tried to fight the dog physically, maybe break its neck, but it was so damn stubborn thrashing around that I couldn’t seem to get a decisive blow or chokehold.
Switching tactics, I flew to the broken column and dropped to my feet behind it. The collapse had scattered rocks everywhere and grabbed two big ones. I could definitely handle a skull crusher of a rock with ease now. I pitched one at the dog as it was locking onto my new location, but I didn't quite judge my new strength and the rock's size yet and whizzed it right past the dog.
The second one barely missed.
Shit.
It was coming at me fast. I snatched up one more rock and pitched it with all my strength at the monster's head.
I heard its skull crack. The monster dropped in its tracks, twitched a few times, and died as a trickle of blood stained the tiles.
I caught my breath for a second, both relieved and astonished by the power in my throw.
Then I got closer and saw that the monster had already been wounded. It had gash marks with dried blood caked on its side. I hadn’t caused those.
So there's something here more dangerous...
I started to climb the steps. One long set of them was split by a landing before the next set began. Here, at the landing, I found the body of another monster, the same as the other. This only confirmed my suspicions. Maybe the beasts fought each other, but I had a feeling not. Certainly, I had to be prepared to find something worse.
But I made you a promise, my Celeste. So whatever it is, I'll deal with it.We'll have cottages and babies and you can study magical baking. I'll never make you worry again.
At the top of the stairs, the voices started to become overwhelming, roaring in my head so loudly that I covered my ears, but that did nothing. It was inside my head, the lost moaning and muttering and sobbing of hundreds of voices.
"I'm here to help!" I shouted. "Please be quiet and show me the way."
That didn't do a damn thing.
Just like the isle itself, I was afraid these voices were lost forever. Lost to time, lost at the edge of the world. I didn't know if they heard a word I said.
The interior of the temple was gloomy, with big torches that couldn't be lit. Any attempt at fire magic just sputtered and died. Luckily, it had tall, narrow windows set in the walls like some ancient cathedral, and that was enough light to lead the way. My footsteps made an echoing sound in the room, no matter how I tried to be quiet, so I changed back into a bat again and flew in to the interior-most room.
This was a circular room with ceilings as high as any grand building I'd ever seen, and the only windows were near the very top. The walls were lined with hundreds of vaults, each locked with rusted chains.
But all the lights in the room were aimed to an altar in the center of it all, a pedestal that was decorated in shining ornaments of gold depicting hundreds of different small animals, from birds and frogs and bats up through cats and dogs, eagles and bearded dragons, even seals and fish. I had never met a wizard with an aquatic familiar, so I wondered if they had died out.
I can't believe no one ever looted this gold, I thought. But who really cared about the gold? There clearly used to be something sitting on this illuminated pedestal, and now it was empty.
Besides that, as I took a closer look around, returning to human form, I saw a scorch mark on the floor and a tiny speck of glinting jewelry.
I picked up the tiny ornament. It might have been a bracelet for a person, or a necklace for a familiar in animal form. It carried a stone of lapis lazuli. The other side, the back of the setting, was stamped with the crest of St. Augustine, with the fleur de lys, lion, castle, and a peacock drinking the water of eternal life.
St. Augustine?
Has someone from Jenny's home beat me to this place?
If a familiar died in the service of a wizard, their body vanished. This necklace could be the remains.
But either way, the pedestal was empty and I got the feeling I definitely shouldn't touch it. If this necklace was a protection charm, it had fared about as well as the dog beasts.
"Listen to me!” I called. "I have come a long way to get here, and I plead with you, that if you want your cloaks to be set free and your souls with them, you'll tell me what happened here."
Now I felt the troubled energy in the cavernous room suddenly rise to a peak and the voices screamed, "They took it! They took it! The cloak! They took it!"
"Who took the cloak?"
"Traitors!"
"Was it other familiars?"
"Other familiars, yes, other familiars! They do not understand...they do not know what they do...and our spirits will be bound here forever more..."
As they cried out in pain so intense that I had to force myself to keep standing. I had to draw deep into the power I had taken from Variel. If I had just been my old self, ordinary Bevan, I know I couldn't have listened to that pain without getting sucked up into it. I would have forgotten everything and never left.
"I'll get the cloak back," I said.
"You will never be able to do it...one poor little familiar..."
"Look at me. I'm not one poor familiar. I've stolen the power of a demon. I'm Bevan Soundhunter, and I'm also Bevan the Devourer, and I have sworn myself to freeing our people for good, so that we are no longer born into this bondage. I understand that breaking the covenants was not enough. I want more."
"You want to break the original bond?" The voice echoed terribly.
"Yes!"
“So no more familiars will exist."
"But we will still exist," I said. "Shifters. Who make our own destiny."
Some small part of me, of course, thought about Helena. Of growing up beside her, of the bond we shared, and how I helped her learn to be a better witch, as all familiars and wizards learned together.
But in the end, I knew we could never gain any power without our freedom.
The building started to crack apart with hundreds of shattering echoes--or so I thought at first, but really, it was all the rusted chains snapping and the vaults opening all through the chamber, and from them tumbled hundreds of dusty cloaks and capes and pelts, made of feather, fur, and hide. Most were tiny, but a few were from larger animals. All of them looked dirty and stuff and smelled like a tomb, and I knew they'd been here for longer than we could figure. Long enough to be completely forgotten.
"Devour my soul!" one lone wail called out, and I knew it came from the tiny pelt of a mouse.
Ew. Eat an ancient...mouse skin? This might be going a little too far.
But I could also feel the de
speration, laced with rage, of the spirits. They were testing me, I realized.
I picked up the tiny, stiff, dark thing. Its fur had rubbed off long ago, I guessed, and it could have been a mummified bat wing, dark and shapeless.
Wincing, I bit into it.
The power I'd taken from Lord Variel surprised me, and made the wing snap easily in my fangs, and then it seemed to shrink away so I didn't even have to swallow it. I just absorbed it. I ate the other half, and I felt the soul of the mouse shifter, residing inside me like a candle in the window of a dark house.
A tiny spark. But what could many sparks do?
Now I knew what I had to do.
I promised not to devour anything, but this was different. This wasn't for me. This was for every shifter who had been turned into a familiar, from their ancient ancestor to now. I would devour them all, and then I would set each and every one of them free.
But I needed the first cloak. The one that rested on the pedestal. Until I freed her, no shifter would have freedom.
I started shoving them into my mouth, tiny ones and large ones, devouring every last soul in the temple, and with every soul I devoured, I felt stronger until I was blazing with their power. The power of every shifter that had ever been trapped here.
"Revenge," they hissed. "Revenge... You are the one we seek!"
"I am the one," I promised them, and I felt like the words were destined just for me.
I thought I was just Bevan, and all this time...
I was the one.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jenny
"No!" My scream was anguished as I heard Bernard calling me again and again, from some lonely state, as if he had nowhere else to turn.
Bevan tried to rush to me so fast that he slammed my horns into the doorframe and almost stunned myself. He ducked low, pulled his wings in, and rushed straight to my side.
"Bernard...!" I gasped at him. My hands, outstretched, grabbed onto his wings, wanting the sense of security that came from feeling his sturdy warmth. "Variel...he's calling me home."
Bat Out of Hell (Promised to the Demons Book 2) Page 15