A Famine of Crows

by A. A. Chamberlynn

  A pulse of power rocketed out from the depths of the mountain.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Felicity

  The universe tearing apart woke her from her velvety, dark sleep.

  The universe… the world… reality… she just knew something was ending. She had felt a feeling like this before. Twice before. The day she transformed into a Rider, and the day Sekhmet broke the fifth seal.

  The day she’d transformed into a Rider, the feeling had been more internal. A power felt just in the four of them. They were the ushers of the Apocalypse, but not the Apocalypse itself. They sent forth famine and pestilence and war and death into the world, chaos and destruction for sure, but not the end itself.

  The day Sekhmet broke the fifth seal, she’d felt a crack in the world. In the core of things, the structure of existence. Blood had fallen from the sky. Terror began to seep across the land, the ill portents unmistakable.

  But this time it was so much stronger. This felt as if someone had reached two hands into that crack and split it wide open.

  And those two hands were hers.

  Felicity blinked, her vision spinning. She looked down at her own slender hands, her perfect cocoa skin, and in them she saw the two pieces that had been, just moments before, the unbroken sixth seal. Two halves of the glowing box that they’d pulled from Yggdrasil, the sacred tree.

  But how…

  How had she broken it? How had she gotten into the mine? She didn’t remember any of it before this moment.

  The earth lurched beneath her feet and she heard a sound like demons rising from Hell.

  This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a terrible dream.

  But she felt the surge of magic swirling around her. A rush of power like a tsunami. A song of ending, dark and sweet and sorrowful. And she knew that if that song reached its conclusion, there would be nothing but silence, forever and always.

  And to her horror, she realized that a part of her thrilled in this revelation.

  The end was nigh.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Penelope

  Penelope felt a strange numbness sweep over her. Their mission had failed. Everything they’d done in these last few desperate weeks had amounted to nothing. The seal had been broken and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  Because this seal was different. She could feel how much more powerful it was. She could feel the tear they’d created in reality. They. Because they could still feel enough of a connection to Felicity that she acted as a conduit. She was part of them, and they of her. They were Riders of the Apocalypse, and their magic was never stronger than now. Just one step more to total annihilation. It was so close she could taste it.

  They’d been fools to think they could ever stop the end of the world. To think they could protect the sixth seal. Sekhmet had clearly broken through their defenses, and easily. She had Felicity’s magic, but somehow she’d also gotten through the night and stars she and Dynah had placed in the mine, as well as Willow’s metal bars.

  “We need to get out of here!” Willow called, breaking through Penelope’s thoughts. “Zane needs a doctor.”

  “A doctor,” Penelope echoed. She snorted. “We’ll all be dead soon.”

  Willow’s eyes widened a moment, then narrowed to angry slits. “I don’t want to hear your doomsday speech. Help me!”

  “I’m not leaving Felicity,” Dynah growled.

  “Felicity is gone,” Willow snapped. “And she’s not coming back.”

  “You know that’s not true.” Dynah locked her blue eyes on Willow. “You can feel her, same as I can. She’s still in there.”

  “How exactly are you planning to get her back?” Penelope asked. “You didn’t have much luck before.”

  “I don’t know.” Dynah paced next to Zane, who looked gray and clammy.

  “We’ve lost this battle,” Willow said. “Pretty sure we’ve lost the whole damn war. We need to regroup. For once, even I don’t think we should go in guns blazing.”

  “She’s right. Sekhmet is too powerful.” Penelope bent down next to Zane and Willow. “We have to get the spear out if we’re going to move him. But we have to be ready to stop the bleeding.” She took her cloak off and handed it to Willow.

  “Zane,” Willow said, her voice shaking. “We’re going to take the spear out now.”

  He looked up and nodded, though his eyes were glazed over, and he didn’t seem able to focus on her. Penelope had never seen so much blood in her life. Willow reached down with trembling hands. Her jade eyes met Penelope’s for a moment, and Penelope realized she’d never seen her friend frightened before. She reached over and took the spear herself, nodding to Willow. Then, in one swift motion, she pulled it out.

  Zane cried out and lost consciousness, and Willow quickly began to wrap the cloak around his leg. She pulled off her belt and tightened it securely with that. They stood, and Penelope grabbed his boots while Willow grabbed him under the arms. With Dynah’s help, they managed to get him slung over Bullet’s back.

  “Going somewhere?”

  They spun. Sekhmet stood in the opening to the mine shaft. She held up the two halves of Yggdrasil’s heart, her smile a taunt, and threw them to the ground.

  “Can you feel it?” A laugh bubbled from her lips and she raised her hands to the air, dancing around in a circle, eyes closed in radiant bliss.

  “The feeling of the world ending?” Penelope snapped. “You’re sick.”

  “Don’t act as if you don’t like it,” Sekhmet said with a smile, Felicity’s smile. “But I didn’t mean that. I’m talking about the souls. So many, all over the world. Released. Free.”

  “You mean…” Dynah’s eyes widened in horror.

  Sekhmet smiled. “Floods. Earthquakes. Meteors. I’m surprised we haven’t—” She cut off as a strange sound filled the sky. “Ahhh. Right on time.”

  Penelope turned, gazing out across the canyon and up into the sky. She saw something on the far horizon and squinted to get a better look. It looked like a storm cloud, large and dark, but stretched east and west as far as she could see. It moved rapidly, faster than any normal storm cloud could travel. The cloud became noticeably closer in just a matter of moments. Penelope felt a wave of horror in her chest. The parts of the sky that she’d turned back to daylight went black again, but this time it wasn’t night.

  Darkness fell. The air filled with a deep droning, like a thousand tractors plowing across a field, vibrating around her. Then something smacked into the side of her check. A whir in her ear, and another object whizzed past. And then the wave of them collided into her.

  Locusts.

  Penelope could hear or feel nothing but the whirring of wings. Thousands upon thousands of them. An impenetrable wave, pelting her, suffocating her. It was like the night when it had attacked her, but this darkness covered the whole sky. There was no escaping it. No one to rescue them. She ran to Domino and grabbed his reins, tugging him toward the entrance to the mine. It was like struggling against a powerful wind, hail pelting her from every direction. Except this hail had legs.

  They somehow managed to fight their way to the tunnel. Willow was ahead of her, leading Bullet with Zane still slung over her back. Dynah stood next to her as they moved through the entrance. Once inside, she could breathe a little. The locusts were coming into the mineshaft, but it wasn’t quite as thick a wave. Fewer bugs followed them the further they moved down the tunnel. Slowly, the sounds of wings receded behind them.

  Penelope flicked a stray locust off her shoulder and took several deep breaths to fight the panic clawing up from her belly like a wild animal. The world was coming apart at the seams. Tens of thousands of people were dying. And it may have been Sekhmet who dealt this latest blow, but it was the Riders who had started it.

  It was them.

  She’d had to cling to the belief that they could turn this around. It had been the only thing keeping her from going mad these last few weeks. To know that somehow,
they’d fix it, that they’d undo all the death and destruction they’d caused. But now they’d lost that chance. There was no going back from this point. No redemption.

  In the darkness ahead she saw a soft glittering in the last of the light, the veins of copper in the walls. She tried to form a ball of magic in her hand to light the way, but she couldn’t tap into any happy memories, any feelings of love and hope. The last of that had been demolished right along with the sixth seal.

  “Where’s Dynah?” Willow suddenly said, her voice coming from a couple feet ahead of her.

  Penelope’s eyes strained into the dim light, her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t see Dynah, and she didn’t see Sekhmet. Which wasn’t a good thing at all.

  “Sekhmet must have taken her when we were distracted.” Her voice sounded hollow, devoid of emotion.

  “Well, then,” Willow said. “There’s nothing to be done for it but go get her.”

  Penelope could hear the defeat in her voice. They both knew there was no winning this. But they weren’t going to abandon Dynah.

  “What about Zane?” she asked Willow, nodding her head toward his unconscious figure, still draped over Bullet’s back.

  “He’ll be here when we get back,” Willow said.

  It was a lie, and they both knew it; the part about coming back. But Penelope just reached out and grabbed Willow’s hand so they wouldn’t get separated in the dark, and they began to fumble deeper into the depths of the mountain.

  They didn’t have far to go. Not ten minutes later, they saw a glow ahead. As they approached it they saw, in the intersection of several tunnels that branched off from the main one like spokes in a wagon wheel, a circle of black stones and clear crystals. At its center stood a metal bowl with herbs and oils smoldering softly. Everything was lit by several orbs of blue fire which hung in midair around the circumference.

  And standing on the far side of the circle, Sekhmet and Dynah.

  Penelope could tell by the look of strain on her sister’s face that Sekhmet once again had a lasso of magic wrapped around her. Pain shone in her eyes. Pain, and also grief. Grief for the loss of Felicity. Sekhmet’s skin shone with something slick, some sort of oil. She held a dagger in her hand made of green stone.

  “The events of the evening continue,” Sekhmet said with a triumphant smile. “I haven’t had this much fun in millennia.”

  “Don’t you think the Norse deities are going to be testy that you broke the sixth seal? It was theirs to break, after all, their souls to reap,” Willow said.

  Sekhmet waved a hand in the air as if shooing a fly. “They shouldn’t have lost it, then. I can’t be blamed for their carelessness.”

  “Yes, but didn’t you plan this all along?” Penelope asked. “Luring Felicity to the book in your temple? Making her think the spell was her idea?”

  Sekhmet frowned. “I wish I could take credit for that, but I actually did not see that one coming. I just took advantage of the situation after my book was stolen. My plan for revenge ended up being much simpler than I had anticipated.” Her smile was back, and she waved her hands in the air. “And now I reap double the souls! It’s really quite delectable.”

  Penelope felt a roil of nausea in her stomach.

  “You’d still better watch your back,” Willow said. “What you think is fair game may not be viewed that way by the other deities, once they find out you took more than your fair share of the souls.”

  “Oh,” Sekhmet said, and her smile grew truly predatory. “But I will have you four to do that for me.”

  Penelope’s eyes widened and Sekhmet paused, clearly drinking in the looks of horror on their faces.

  “Let’s begin,” the goddess said. “Your transformation awaits.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dynah

  The lash of power Sekhmet had wrapped around Dynah’s neck relaxed slightly as the goddess reached out her power to Penelope and Willow and dragged them forward. She arranged them around the circle so that Dynah stood at the western point, Penelope the southern, Willow the eastern, and Sekhmet herself at the north.

  A glow rose from the crystals, bright white light from the quartz, and a soft, gray light from the obsidian. They were interspersed so that they alternated, black-white-black-white. There was one primary ring forming the circle, about eight feet in diameter, and then a smaller overlapping circle at each point, within which they stood. A bitter scent rose from the wormwood herb in the center of the circle, along with the earthy, musky scent of the frankincense oil. Dynah stared into the flames, her blood racing, her chest so tight it felt like an invisible corset was crushing her.

  “I thought the spell had to be performed during a lunar eclipse.” She looked over to Sekhmet. Into the eyes of her friend, though her friend was no longer there.

  Sekhmet smiled. “That’s the thing about breaking the sixth seal, cracking reality. I can easily change such conditions when everything is sliding into the abyss.”

  She reached a slender arm into the air and twisted her hand. Although Dynah couldn’t see the sky overhead, couldn’t see anything but the craggy roof of the tunnel, the earthen tomb where they’d make their last stand, she could feel a shift. It was a feeling like prying open a rusty animal trap, a strong resistance, slowly pushed back, and then a click as it locked into position. She could tell by the looks on the faces of her sister and Willow that they had felt it, too.

  “There. Thanks for that reminder, Death.” Sekhmet smirked. “Wouldn’t want anything to go wrong with the spell.”

  Sekhmet raised both of her hands and began to chant in a language that Dynah didn’t understand. Or rather, she couldn’t make out the words. But she could feel the magic that formed as Sekhmet’s lips moved, feel the heady buzz that rose from the crystals, causing a zap like lightning around the circle. Her body jerked from the sudden rush of energy. No, she couldn’t understand the words themselves, but she could feel the meaning in the magic.

  The spell spoke of a magic from before time, from the forming of the worlds, the coming together of the molecules of spirit and matter to create everything that was. The earth, the sea, the sky. Trees and volcanos and flowers. Animals and butterflies and people. The essence that wove everything together. Raw creation. Raw magic.

  And within that raw state was endless potential. For light, for dark, for everything in between. The words of the spell interrupted the fabric of things, unwove what was woven, melted that which was solid, broke things down. Transformed them.

  Dynah realized then what Sekhmet wanted to transform within them. She wanted to turn their light to dark. Their rebellion to obedience. Their free will to entrapment. She wanted to take everything about them and bend it to her likeness. And within that realization came another, deeper dawning.

  Sekhmet wanted to change them because there was too much goodness in them, and that didn’t suit her purposes.

  Felicity had wanted to perform the spell to transform their powers to good, but they hadn’t ever needed the spell to transform. They already possessed the light they sought.

  Another wave of power flashed around the circle, and Dynah’s legs buckled as it rocketed through her like lightning. A wind rose in the tunnel, spiraling around them, faster and faster. Dynah could feel a tug like a divining rod as the crystals pulled at her body. The quartz, specifically. She felt her essence, her soul, sucking out of her and flowing into the clear stones. At the same time, the gray light from the obsidian began to move across the floor toward her, rolling like mist.

  Then, as the power began to peak, Sekhmet lifted the malachite athame and sliced off her left index finger. Felicity’s finger. Dynah felt her knees buckle, but the magic wouldn’t let her fall. She watched in horror as blood rushed from her friend’s body, out onto the stone floor beneath them. Sekhmet didn’t even flinch, but just kept speaking the words of the spell.

  They were out of time.

  “Felicity!” she screamed over the wind, which now roared in h
er ears, along with the deep intonation of Sekhmet’s words. “I know you’re in there!”

  The body of her friend remained motionless as Sekhmet continued to chant, arms raised above her head, blood coursing down her body. She didn’t so much as look at her. Dynah winced as pain lanced through her again, arcing through her limbs and up into her jawbone. Her vision went black for a moment and she wobbled like a kite buffeted in storm winds. She could feel her strength leaching out with each moment that passed, flowing into the crystals, as the black mist inched closer.

  “Felicity!” Her scream twisted halfway through as another arc of lightning ripped through her, high-pitched and animalistic. “Fight her! I know you can!”

  Another tug, and Dynah could feel her life force seeping out of her mouth, her eyes. It flowed, silver threads of it, up and out of her and into the quartz. She could see the same thing happening to Penelope and Willow. Sekhmet’s voice had reached a fever-pitch, her arms trembling as the magic of the spell coursed through her. The black mist reached the toes of Dynah’s boots.

  “You’re my only friend!” Dynah screamed. “Come back to me.” Her voice faltered, her throat raw, her energy all but gone. “More than a friend,” she said, with the last of her strength.

  Dynah felt the black mist curl around her leg and seep into her, a moment before her consciousness slipped away. And the last thing she felt was gratitude, that she didn’t have to feel it take her completely.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Felicity

  Felicity didn’t know where she was exactly. Since the moment she had felt reality split, she’d awoken and crouched quietly in the dark so that Sekhmet wouldn’t know she was conscious. So she couldn’t shush her to sleep like the times before.