26. Twenty Six

twenty-six

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It was oddly soothing listening to the sound of my blood oozing down my neck and falling to the ground. A relaxing metronome that allowed me to fall into a semi-meditative state, the boundary between life and death growing worn and thin.

After all this time, you’d think I’d grow used to straddling that line. To being neither one nor the other.

That’s what being a vampire meant, after all. A creature who had a foot in both worlds.

Not like this though. It felt like I was close to crossing that final barrier. To passing into the great beyond and leaving everything behind.

The thought was less terrifying than it should have been.

The sun above was just as intense, as searing, but I felt removed from it. As if it existed on a different plane than the one I was on.

With that same sense of disconnection, I took in the shadows at the forest’s edge.

Something had been done to them. The barrier Inara had been talking about. The one that was supposed to prevent Alches from using them to intrude.

The longer I stared; the more I saw.

Something moved in their depths. A small shift here. A tiny flex there.

Until finally, a picture took shape.

A shadow hound lay on his belly, his paws extended in front of him, their tips nearly touching the border where shadow gave way to light. As if sensing my attention, Alches whined and squirmed forward a few centimeters before the barrier stopped him.

A dissatisfied woof echoed in my mind. There was a hint of reproachfulness in it.

Alches whined again before nudging the border between light and shadow with his snout. Finished, he gave me a pointed stare.

Perhaps it was the blood loss talking but it felt like he wanted me to do something with that shadow.

It was the “what” that eluded me.

Alches pawed at the same spot. A tentacle thumped the barrier.

He definitely wanted something from me.

The apathy that had started to claim me faded as I concentrated on those shadows, sending my mind questing along the thin connection I had with them. Had always had with them. Whether I was conscious of it or not.

What I found there was homecoming. The same sense of belonging I felt in Noctessa.

Right in front of me was my escape. If I could reach those shadows, I could take Deborah and Lowen and leave this place. I was a magic breaker. The barrier wouldn’t be able to stop me for long.

Hold on, Debs , I thought at my companion. It was time I got inventive.

Breathing through the pain, I tested the root impaling me. A small movement at first. Then a bigger one.

Both left me feeling worse. If that was possible.

“Ai—leen.” Lowen’s broken voice rasped from the cage suspended from the tree’s branches. “Don’t—struggle.”

I sagged, my brief surge of energy exhausted.

Damn it. I had to be the world’s worst vampire.

I couldn’t even summon the strength to glare at the shadows that were my salvation. Too tired to do anything but stare numbly.

Why did they have to be so far away?

Unknowingly, I settled into something of a fugue state. Everything else ceasing to exist except me and those shadows.

For a moment, I thought I heard my name being called. My body fell away. A piece of me flew toward those shadows, seeking refuge in the cool comfort of their embrace. They fluttered. The edges rippling.

Hands tugged on my knees, fingers digging into the flesh of my thigh as their owner crawled their way up my body. It wasn’t until a liquid warmth that tasted like cherries and summer filled my mouth that I snapped back to myself.

“I did it,” Deborah breathed, looking so proud of herself. And oddly relieved as my gaze focused on her.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped.

I moaned. “No.”

She shouldn’t have done that. Somehow—and I didn’t know how given her state—she’d managed to drag her body across the few feet that separated us to shove her wrist in my mouth. The willpower it had taken was something I didn’t even want to consider.

“How much did you give me?” I asked, desperate.

The answer didn’t really matter. Any amount was too much.

I glared at the shadows across the clearing. What was it that I had seen in those last seconds before Deborah’s blood had revived me?

It had been faint, but the shadows had seemed to move. Just like they’d done in the oubliette.

With a desperation spurred on by Deborah’s fading heartbeat, I threw everything I had at them, clawing them toward me like Deborah must have clawed her way through the dirt toward me.

My first attempt slid off something glass-like. My second caught purchase on a tiny chink in the defenses.

Pressure built in my head. A vise clamping around my forehead until the sensation became too much and I lost my grip.

“What are you doing?” Lowen asked.

I didn’t answer. Were those shadows closer than before or was it just my imagination?

To my eye, the spot where Alches lay looked warped, bulging toward me.

I reached again, coaxing and pulling until the pain in my head forced me to stop.

Yes.

There was a clear difference in the shadows around Alches now.

There was a rustle as Lowen maneuvered himself into a better position to see. “How are you doing that?”

I didn’t know. Nor did I care.

It was working. Although slowly.

I worked with the shadows, not giving up even when it felt like someone had embedded razor blades in my mind.

After what felt like a century later, I checked on my progress.

Inches. That’s all I had managed to claw toward me. Less than a foot in total.

At this rate, it would take weeks or months for them to reach me. Deborah would be long dead by then. Me too, probably.

I sagged in my bonds, hope abandoning me.

The tree’s influence blunted my thoughts and emotions, until I forgot what I was doing. I drifted, my mind wandering to strange places as the world took on a dream-like quality.

Half of me remained bound by the tree roots, just conscious enough to be aware of my surroundings. The rest of me found myself in the charred remains of a forest.

The fine particles of ash on the ground clung to my bare feet as I walked through the ruined remains of what had once been my mental forest. By instinct, my path led me to a meadow that was the twin of the one where my physical body rested.

The blackened husk of an ancient oak tree stood in its center. A dead thing whose presence cast a pall over the destruction all around me.

Sorrow over its plight squeezed my heart. The sense of something important being lost plaguing me. Before I could figure out what that something was, the caw of a crow drew my attention upward.

A black bird landed on the oak’s dead branches; its beady eyes focused on me.

We stared at each other for several seconds before the flapping of wings grew into a thunderous roar.

A murder of crows circled in the sky high above. Right over the oak tree.

Wind whipped hair into my face as the sense that I hovered on the cusp of some great revelation tickled the back of my mind.

The oak tree. The crows. All of it connected somehow.

Before I could figure out what that was, I was pulled partially back into the clearing. My subconscious picking up on something my waking mind had overlooked.

I was no longer alone in the meadow.

There were dozens standing in the open field and the trees beyond. A veritable army of Red Caps, a few Fae that I recognized as being part of the Lucies. They were outnumbered by the vampires gathered around Vitus, Navya, and Sofia.

Saul was there too. Almost unnoticed where he stood among the trees, a cloak of smoke obscuring his lower half.

I found Arlan not far from Breandan’s cage. His face carefully blank as his gaze caught mine. He waited until I was focused on him before his gaze strayed toward the eldritch, standing in the king’s shadow. Inara perched on the creature’s shoulder, her face tight and set.

I got the vague feeling that Arlan was trying to tell me something with that glance, but my brain felt too slow to figure it out.

Muiredach leveled a look of distaste on the vampires. “Was it really necessary to bring so many?”

“You don’t know Thomas and Liam like I do. They will come for her. It’s best to be prepared,” Vitus responded.

“They may come, but they will not find her. The illusions around Summer’s Heart are impenetrable.”

Despite his words, I could see Muiredach was already losing interest in the topic, a look of boredom settling on his face. He froze as he caught sight of me. Something other than apathy moving across his features.

Desire. Relief. As if I’d just handed him the greatest gift of his life.

“Magic breaker,” Muiredach breathed on a sigh.

The shock on Vitus’s face was almost worth my secret being exposed.

I didn’t have to ask how the king had figured it out. After the last few hours, I was changed. The things I couldn’t see before coming through in high-definition technicolor.

Like recognized like.

They’d failed to warn me that the Summer King was a magic breaker. Though his power was a touch different than mine.

There was also something wrong with it. Somewhere along the way, it had been corrupted and was now rotting inside him. Its metaphysical stench overpowering. As if the sins of his deeds had permanently stained him all the way down to his soul.

This was why magic breakers had become so rare in recent history. Because he’d been hunting my kind down in search of a cure.

You see, there was a flaw in his power. For one thing, his enthrallment ability wasn’t natural. Likely, it had been absorbed the same way mine had absorbed a piece of Ahrun’s madness.

After which, he went through a becoming. Much like mine.

His was a cautionary tale of what my fate might be if I survived this day. Not all metamorphosis left you renewed. Some of them turned you into something frightful.

He’d become a different sort of vampire. His sustenance—magic. Particularly magic like mine.

Just how many of my kind had he killed over the centuries?

Thousands, likely. Many of whom probably met their end in this very same meadow. Their bodies now trapped just a few feet below its surface.

None of those lives had given him the thing he wanted. Mine might though.

“This changes everything,” Muiredach crooned.

At that, Vitus jerked. “You can’t. We had a deal.”

“That was before I knew what she was.” There was no mistaking the look of delight on his face as he scanned me up and down. As if I’d just handed him his heart’s desire. “You don’t waste something as rare and precious as her on a petty thing like revenge.”

Anger twisted Vitus’s features. “This plan has been in the works for centuries.”

The Lucies blocked Vitus’s path. Their swords were suddenly out of their scabbards and pointing at his neck. All without a single change of expression from the Fae involved.

“Careful, vampire,” the king warned without drawing his greedy gaze from me. “A tool is only useful as long as it is obedient.”

See, that was why you had to be choosy when selecting your allies. Otherwise, they’d stab you in the back.

Ahrun should have taught him that.

A giant wolf slipped from the forest. His head lowered and his tail down but not quite between his legs as he slunk over to the king’s side.

Icy blue eyes met mine briefly. The intelligence and self-awareness there difficult to believe belonged to anyone under an enthrallment.

Muiredach frowned at the wolf as it edged toward me. “What are you doing here? I didn’t call you.”

Brax finished crossing the last few feet of the meadow. His jaw opened. Fangs pierced my skin as he closed his mouth around my hand.

It was like a circuit being completed. A current flooded my veins as Muiredach roared behind him.

The corner of my being where my magic had curled in on itself to prevent being siphoned away by the oak erupted. A geyser that shot to the surface.

It poured into Brax, lighting up his pack bonds until it was like a galaxy had exploded in my mind’s eye. My magic swept through them, gobbling down the gold light strangling those bonds. Devouring them with a never-ending blanket of darkness.

Brax’s mouth shook around my hand as I yanked hard on those bonds. The enthrallment that held his pack spellbound snapped.

From the forest, an eerie howl lifted. A moment later, dozens more joined.

Despite the magic it had consumed, the void inside me was still ravenous. It was no longer something I wielded consciously but rather a hunger like my bloodlust from when I was first turned.

And it needed to feed.

It turned toward the wolves it had just freed.

I whimpered. No. Not them.

It seethed, the need for sustenance overwhelming all other thought.

Instinctively, I searched for a new source of magic. One that might soothe the insatiable pit at the center of that strange power.

I didn’t have to look far. No further than the root impaling my chest. The magic that coursed through it promising a much better feast than Brax’s pack would have given me.

I wasn’t entirely in control as my power reached down to gobble up the golden light infused in the root.

I’d just started to drink from it when a blow caved in my chest.

The roots holding me broke, ripping free as I flew backward.

I hit the trunk of the oak tree. Something important in my spine gave way in a brief flash of pain.

I fell to the ground and lay there.

Broken.

Dying.

Muiredach bore down on me. My death in his eyes.

Desperation—or the small amount of power I’d managed to absorb from the roots of the oak—had me reaching for my connections to Liam.

Suddenly, I could feel him and the rest inside me. Connor’s desperation as he bounded through a deep forest, following a nearly non-existent game trail. Thomas running flat out beside him.

Through it all, Liam’s single-minded focus.

At my mental touch, he slowed. Electric blue eyes pierced my soul. “Aileen.”

Liam.

Up ahead, Thomas stopped. “You have her?”

“She’s close.”

There was a rustle from the underbrush as Connor, no longer a stag, joined the other two. “I sense her too.”

“If we can’t bring down the illusion, it won’t matter how close we are. We could be right on top of them and never know it,” Thomas said, his voice giving away his frustration.

Liam wasn’t listening. His forehead furrowed as realization settled on his features. “I can feel her pain. She’s dying.”

A stark silence fell.

Mo chuisle . Liam’s voice sounded in my head. You have to let me in.

I can’t.

I wanted to. More than he could imagine. Something prevented me. It was like there was a sheet of glass between me and everything else. Every attempt slid off its smooth surface, leaving me in the same predicament as before. Only more exhausted.

You can, Liam assured me. You’re the most stubborn woman I know. Open the way, mo chuisle. Let us in.

Liam’s presence in my mind. Whatever power that had enabled contact weakened until he and the other two felt very far away.

Please, A stór, Liam’s heart whispered. Don’t leave me like this.

Then I was whisked away. Pulled back into my body in a dizzying rush.

Not much time had passed while my mind was away.

Snarling filled my ears. Brax’s werewolf was fighting the small army Muiredach had brought. Blood flowed from the multitude of wounds all over his body. He savaged an enemy, ripping the Fae’s arm off his body and flinging it at another Fae barreling toward him.

Brax leapt lithely out of the way. A third attack from his rear forced him to twist in midair in a feat of supernatural prowess that allowed him to avoid the next blow.

He landed facing his assailant then darted forward, grabbing the Fae’s lead leg and yanking. There was no time for him to finish off his victim as two more Fae closed in from either side.

Brax sprang backwards, weaving back and forth.

Despite the damage he was inflicting, it wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many Fae, leaving him outnumbered ten to one.

A series of howls came from the forest.

The pack.

Frustration bled into their vocalizations, as they failed to breach the illusions and enchantments protecting the meadow.

The djinn, Saul, floated around the periphery of the battle, not taking part. He watched with the air of an observer.

Arlan was doing the same from a few feet away, his inaction making me think he was waiting for something.

They both were.

The sunlight, already intense, grew blistering hot. A reflection of Muiredach’s anger as he strode toward me. Each step carrying with it a sense of inevitability. Almost as much as the halo that formed around his figure. A source of blinding light that sent pain stabbing through my eyes.

I was too weak to do anything more than squint as he loomed over me. All that power primed to end me.

Inara flew from the eldritch’s shoulder, a tiny sword in her hand. “I won’t let you.”

Feeling like the world was receding under me, like sand shifting as waves carried it away, my gaze shifted to the canopy of the oak tree. Its ancient, gnarled branches and thick coverage allowing only a shimmer of sunlight to penetrate the gloom at its base.

Somehow, I’d managed to come to a rest directly beneath Lowen. The pixie was too weak to give more than a token struggle as he watched his consort fly to her death.

“Don’t just lie there, Aileen. Do something!” Breandan screamed.

My eyes slipped closed in a slow blink that had time skipping.

The next thing I knew, Arlan was bent over me. For the first time since I’d known him, he’d fully shed his human skin, letting me see what lay beneath the illusion he kept permanently wrapped around him.

Though clearly Fae, he was much more than that too. In old legends, they would have referred to him as a creature of the forest. Something spawned in the deepest, most primal parts. Before humans had spread through every corner of the Earth.

Eyes the color of tree sap regarded me thoughtfully. The amber resin caught me, drawing me in and trapping me in its viscous embrace.

In awe, I watched as horns branched from his head. Flowers twining around some of the prongs.

Power as ancient as the forest danced in the air around his head. Its source harkening back to the very beginning of this realm.

I got it now.

Liam told me that Muiredach had destroyed the original royal line of this realm, but that wasn’t exactly right.

Someone had survived.

Two someones actually.

The eldritch who served as the meadow’s custodian—and Arlan. The eldritch’s offspring.

Did Muiredach know? Did anyone?

Not that it mattered. Arlan was planning to end me so my power wouldn’t fall into Muiredach’s hands. I could read his intention as clear as the branches above me.

He’d probably die soon afterward. Likely in an excruciatingly painful way. But at least Muiredach wouldn’t claim my magic for his own.

I had a feeling the power inside me was what Muiredach had been searching for so unsuccessfully all these years. With it, he could fix what his greed had destroyed.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Even if it meant I no longer existed.

“I’m sorry. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he told me with such obvious regret that I believed him. Whatever he’d been scheming in that barrow of his, I didn’t think he’d expected it to lead here.

I should have felt something at the prospect of my end. Fear. Regret.

Death was a permanent state of being that couldn’t be changed once one had crossed that threshold.

At least not if you didn’t want to become a zombie, revenant, or one of a dozen other nasty creatures who had no mind or will of their own. Only endless hunger.

There was a curious sense of detachment as I watched Arlan reach for me.

Maybe it was because I was already dying. He was just hastening the process.

Not wanting Arlan’s face to be the last thing I saw, I looked past him to the canopy of the oak. Ahrun perched in its branches, his features alive with interest as he watched the show.

Catching my gaze on him, he smiled and mouthed, “What are you going to do now?”

People kept telling me to act. Yet not a one had given me a hint as to what I should do.

Aren’t you forgetting? Ahrun tapped his chest. You have one trick left to try. Embrace your darkness, child. Become what you’re meant to be.

Arlan’s hand touched the spot over my heart, his power pouring into me in a blaze of fire. A muffled scream rose to my throat as my back bowed.

Deep inside, chains that I’d never fully been aware of shattered one by one.

For once, I let them.

Power—cool and dark—rushed to meet Arlan’s sunlight. The two powers crashed together with a fury that drew a grunt from the Fae.

His amber eyes flashed to mine. “You—”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, my ears ringing from the darkness freezing me.

I felt myself changing, things shifting inside and out as I became.

A spiderweb of paths spread out before me. Dozens of potential futures.

In some, I was a dark queen. Solitary as I walked the realms, subjugating all before me. In others, I was a true monster. Feared and hunted, spending my days in shadow and night.

None of those futures were what I wanted.

Except one. A tiny possibility that was more dream than reality.

I didn’t care.

Focusing on it, I pushed, forcing my future toward the path I’d selected. Torture blazed through my veins as my body adjusted. Ages passing in the blink of an eye.

The maelstrom at my center ceased.

My eyes popped open.

“What just happened?” Arlan whispered.

“My future.”

It was going to be a beautiful one.

“What are you about to do?” Arlan asked, the faintest trace of uneasiness in his voice.

My gaze strayed to the silhouette of the oak tree. “I’m going to open a doorway.”

I finally understood what my mind had been trying to tell me all this time. Noctessa and this realm—had no one ever wondered why the same meadow and tree existed in both?

It was because they were mirror images of each other. Both coming into existence at the same time. Their roots extending through time and space to intertwine with their twin. Connected in a way most would never realize.

The realms were never meant to be enemies. Rather, reflections of each other.

It was the hubris and greed of those that came later that made them that way.

If a scientist had to put a name to the phenomenon, they’d probably quote some entanglement on a subatomic level.

All I knew was that their connection could be used to create a doorway.

Closing my eyes, I grasped the chaos inside of me. If allowed to fester and expand, it would eventually escape my control and I’d become the monster of my future.

Unless I found a way to expend some of that power and allow my body to settle into its new form first.

Diving deep in my mind, I returned to the charred meadow and its tree that I now knew was a manifestation of my connection to Noctessa. Alches stepped out from behind the tree, watching as I strode across the ash covered ground.

If anything could convince me I was on the right path, his presence did.

Stopping in front of the ruined tree, I pressed my hand to the trunk, my physical body doing the same to the oak in the Summer Lands. “Here’s that doorway you requested, Liam. I hope you find it in time.”

Shadow and blood.

The two ingredients necessary for my magic to work. That along with the kaleidoscope of summer light, courtesy of Arlan, was all I needed to rip through the defenses protecting the heart of the realm.

I thrust my darkness tinged with golden light into the tree and stepped back as it dissolved the trunk. Flecks of ash wafted, carried by the wind that suddenly blew.

The magic bit deeper, burning away the chains that had bound both realms for so long.

In my mind’s eye, a tiny seed sprouted.

From it, a road of shadow and light opened.