by Hazel Hunter
As I walked, the snow I created flurried away from me and I stayed clear of Griogair and the archers on the battlements. Climbing the steps to the tower walkway, the highest point in the castle, I left them covered in thick frost. Even my clothes grew stiff and ice-cold as my druid power continued drawing all of the heat out of everything around me.
Somewhere down below Kendric was preparing to face the enemy, too. I knew what it cost him every time he used his power for anything other than healing. If we survived this, we would both be drained to the brink of death—and I was the only doctor the clan and the Angels had.
I’d always been so practical about the realities of my profession. People died, often too young and unfairly, but that was life. Yet losing poor, sweet Hannah to her injuries had hurt me so much that I’d cried for hours in my mate’s arms.
“Never feel ashamed of grief,” he reminded me when I’d apologized later. “The bond we share with our bloodline, ’tis strong. The lass belonged to us.”
As screwed up as it seemed, time-wise, Hannah and almost all of the Angels were direct descendants of the children Kendric and I would have someday. “I just wish I could have told her before she died.”
“We’re druid kind. We never truly die,” he reminded me gently. “Someday she shall return, my love. Perhaps we too shall share the same time of incarnation with her. Only the Gods ken.”
I’d only just started believing in his Gods, but now I really needed them on my side. I braced my back against the curving tower wall and looked down to see a whole new team of Angels rushing toward the castle and our girls. Behind them swelled a yellow wave made of all the water in the loch, which my husband’s far-seers had predicted. Ruith meant to flood the castle and drown the Angels and mortals inside before she attacked with her army of shifters. Although the clan was immortal, and strong fighters, they would never be able to win that battle.
Which was where I came in.
I looked up into the sun, and for a moment it seemed to darken just a tiny bit before I glanced down at the rushing flood waters. The tower behind me shook as the wave slammed into the castle and flooded inside, and then I released my druid power. For once I didn’t have to be careful about how much I used as I pulled every ounce of heat from the loch tsunami wave. It slowed and then stopped, turning white as it froze, trapping the shifters beneath its thick icy surface.
Snow began to fall all over the island, dusting everything in white.
I felt my knees trembling as I climbed down from the tower and went to the edge of the wall. Kendric came out of the forest as the empty loch bed shimmered with a herd of water-colored horses led by Velvet in his horse form, as well as Conor and Jaime riding two of the biggest halfling foals. They all charged up the frozen banks toward the calpa now trapped in the ice. Reggie ran out to meet them, and Kendric helped her up onto Velvet’s back.
All I could pray at that point was that our tumbler had finally mastered full control over her power, because if she hadn’t, she would burn my husband and Velvet to a crisp.
I shook the snow out of my hair as I watched the loch water freeze around the shape-shifters, who struggled but couldn’t escape the ice. I felt fiercely glad that the Angels had remembered to use Doc Iver’s power, and then I felt giddy for feeling glad. I could feel everything now, from bouncing joy over seeing Deb come back to life to complete disgust for her evil sister’s attack on Dun Dorchas. I also couldn’t wait to see my husband, Morven. I wondered if Deb could do for him what she’d done for me.
I didn’t care if she could, really. I loved him just the way he was.
Since I’d never felt any emotions—Deb had healed the head injury that had made me neuroatypical for my whole life—I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Not like I had time to sort them out, either, because just after Doc Ivers froze the flood, Ruith used magic to blast her way out of it.
“Do you reckon you shall stop me?” she screamed at the castle, flinging bolts of magic at the stone walls and blasting huge holes in them.
Deb caught my arm when I would have gone after her sister from behind. “Wait. Look.”
I turned my head to see Master Gowan and Reggie riding Velvet in his stallion form around the frozen wave. As they went Kendric and Reggie kept flinging fireballs behind them, setting fire to the ground. They must have doused it with oil, because the fireballs shot up and merged into a solid wall of flames.
“They’re trapping them inside?” It didn’t make any sense to me. “Why don’t they just burn them up?”
She exchanged a funny look with the laird. “Kendric knows,” she said, and he nodded.
“Kendric knows what?” I demanded.
Deb smiled a little. “That I’m still alive.”
As the sound of magic blasting through the ice screeched through the air I heard clansman moving back to their secondary defensive positions, leaving the way to the courtyard clear.
“We’re on,” I told the squad as I dropped to the back of the formation.
The boulders that Roxanne and I had lined along one back wall of the courtyard looked like huge, pitted cannonballs, but they were really our last line of defense. I couldn’t risk using my strength inside the castle unless I absolutely had to, because I might bring the whole place down on top of us.
I could hear the clan fighting the calpa Ruith had freed from the ice out in the great hall. They would keep as many shifters back as they could for as long as possible, but we were running out of time.
As Ruith stalked into the courtyard I got into kicking position. “Angels, go proud.”
“Come on, girls,” Tory said as Gayla doused her with a bucket of water, making huge spines shoot out all over her body. “Let’s show this evil bitch just what it means to be sisters.”
She did a front flip to slam into the dark druidess, but a moment before she crashed into her Ruith knocked her away with a glowing sweep of her hand.
“’Tis the best you have, slut?” the druidess said, sneering at me. “You’re going to die slowly.”
“You’re not,” Val called down to her.
From above the courtyard our base used the power she’d borrowed from Roxanne to drop the huge rock she’d been holding over the druidess, but it bounced off her as if it were made of rubber and smashed into the cat walk, knocking our borrower over the side.
“Stop it,” Gayla shrieked, throwing the empty water bucket at Ruith. “We never did anything to you, you horrible witch. Why don’t you just go back to whatever icky slimy place you crawled out of, and–”
As a huge arc of power flung Gayla at me, I rushed forward, grabbed her and pushed her behind me. She screamed with fury and tried to go around me, but I caught her hand. “No, sweetie. She’ll kill you if you go at her again.”
She looked out at Ruith. “She’s killing us anyway. I just want to claw her eyes out before I die.”
Shifters covered with chunks of ice began trotting into the courtyard. One huge stallion came in but suddenly reared up over Ruith, ready to trample her, but she saw through Olivia’s disguise and blasted her across the courtyard.
“Get everyone out of here,” I told Gayla, and then shouted the same thing to the other girls as I got ready to start kicking.
“I think it’s my turn now, Bae,” a familiar voice said.
I jerked around to see Deb walking into the courtyard. I thought for sure it was another shape-shifter trick, but then I saw her aura. It had become a beautiful, soft white light like nothing I’d ever seen, but it was still Deb, too.
“I shallnae be rid of you until I burn you to ash,” the dark druidess said, and held up her hand as it burst into green flames.
“Not a problem,” Deb told her in a very weird, calm voice. “You can set fire to me, or kill me any way you’d like. I won’t fight back. All you have to do is promise to end this war, right now.”
Seeing the mad hatred in my sister’s eyes made me understand something I never had about Ruith: it wasn’t all about her. It
was all about me. Every choice she had ever made, she’d done because of me. From the day I was born she had recognized me as the opposite side of herself. She had been feared as a child, while I had been loved. Our parents had never accepted her, and yet treasured me. I played in the light as she schemed in the darkness.
I also knew how easily I could have become Ruith.
That was why the Gods lured me to the sacred grove that day. I remembered chasing their beautiful butterfly into the circle of stones, laughing and hoping to catch it in my little hands. They had known what my sister had already planned to do. She would never have killed me; even at that young age my power was beginning to manifest. She saw what I would become. No, Ruith would have loved me with all her heart as she slowly turned me away from the light. She would have made me her acolyte, and then her equal. She would have made us the two most powerful druidesses that had ever walked the realm of mortal kind.
In the end, we would have destroyed the world.
Now Ruith looked out at me from her son’s face, and drew the dagger from her belt. “You cannae trick me into a surrender, Deoiridh.” As Sinclair McMaren charged out of the shadows at her she whipped up her other hand and cast a spell that encased him in a pillar of stone. “On your knees, or I shall crush him.”
“Don’t do it,” Gabrielle called to me. “As soon as you’re dead she’ll just kill all of us anyway.”
“It’s okay.” As I knelt down I glanced back at my best friend. “I always knew she would be the one to decide this. Thank you, Gabrielle.” I looked up at my sister. “I’m sorry, Ruith.”
My dark sister shook with rage as she lifted the blade, and screamed with fury as she brought it down to stab me in the heart. The moment the tip pierced my skin my power shot out, freezing her hand. It reflected off the stones of the courtyard, awakening the hidden marks inside every block of Dun Dorchas.
The spells left behind by the Still People amplified my healing power, melting the blade poised above my heart and enveloping my sister’s hand, and then her arm.
“No.” Ruith’s eyes bulged as the healing light spread out, engulfing her and the Angels and the calpa before it passed through the stone walls and into the rest of the castle.
I stood up slowly, turning to watch as the wounds my dark sister had inflicted on my squad healed, and they opened their eyes. The stone encasing Sinclair crumbled away from him, leaving him coughing and then staring at me in wonder. I held my hand out to him as every shape-shifter in the courtyard transformed for the last time. The calpa, now ordinary, very wet horses, milled about in confusion.
Where my dark sister had stood I saw only a druid robe crumpled over a pile of ash. I understood why. Neither Ruith or Iloren could ever be healed, and so the Gods had chosen to end their pain forever.
Sinclair and I walked out into the great hall, where the McGillean warriors were trying to herd more very bewildered horses out of the keepe. Morven, who no longer had the terrible scar on his head, shouted with happiness as Hannah rushed into his arms. I knew the young druid kissing Lacey would never again shift into his black stallion form; he was now fully human.
“’Twas never in the legend, that you’d heal halflings and demons as well as human kind,” Sinclair said to me.
“Maybe the Gods wanted everyone to have a second chance.” I tucked my arm through his. “Like us.”
As the light finally began to fade I saw the laird go still, and followed the direction of his gaze to the stairs, where Coach Jennings was standing and taking it all in. She’d taken off her bandages, and her head wound had vanished.
“Isabel.” Gill jumped over two ruined tables and vaulted up six steps to grab her in his arms and kiss her breathless.
The clan cheered, and then the Angels came hurrying out of the courtyard. I turned to see my best friend shaking her head as she ran for me.
“Just so you know, the next time you scare me like that?” Coco told me as she wrapped her arms around me, “I’m stabbing you in the heart.”
Once the water had receded, the horses had been led out to pasture, and the battle wreckage had been cleared from the great hall, the laird called for a celebration. The druids got to work in the kitchens, the villagers rolled out the ale and whiskey, and the clan fashioned some quick tables out of tree stumps and stone slabs. Gayla decided to teach the guys how to sing “That’s the Way” while doing the Blueberry Faygo, and then suddenly everyone was singing and dancing.
I sat with my arm around Gabrielle and watched the fun for a while, but I kept thinking of that one thing I had left to do. When Griogair finally came back from riding patrol, during which he found plenty of horses but no sign of a single calpa, I knew it was time.
“Hey,” my best friend said as I started to slip out. “Where are you going?” Before I answered she glanced around. “And where’s Sinful?”
“Waiting for me,” I admitted.
She sighed and pulled me close. “Just because he’s the man of your dreams doesn’t mean you have to go live on his boat and fight water demons and like eat fish forever. It’s your life now, Deb. Live it how you want.”
It amazed me how she always knew what was going on with me. Then again, I was the sister she’d chosen. On some level she must have known what I was from the moment we’d met. “I like fish.”
Riding out to the sea cave gave me a chance to see the last of the healing power’s effect on the island; the water was back in the loch and the scorched earth around the castle had disappeared. The grasses had never looked so thick and lush, and flowers were blooming everywhere. One pear orchard I passed had put out so much fruit some of the branches bowed almost to the ground under the weight.
I dismounted by the dunes and tethered the horse before I walked down to the entrance of the cave. Sinclair was sitting on a flat rock there and looking out at the horizon. He saw me and slowly got to his feet.
I smiled. “My lord.”
“My lady.” He bowed.
I joined him on his rock, and we watched the winking lights from the lanterns on his ships and listened to the ebb and flow of the waves.
“I was born on this island,” Sinclair said, and pointed at a cove to the south of us. “My clan hold once stood there. Before my people left, we removed all the stones of power from it, and buried them deep in the earth. The sea washed away the rest.”
“The druids never raised your clan from the dead,” I guessed. “You’ve been around a lot longer than them.”
He nodded. “The Still People became immortals before any mortal kind came to this part of the world. When they did, we knew we could no longer remain in one place, and left to roam the seas. We were never cursed, as some of the stories about us would have it, but life on the ocean changed us and our magic. My clan and I can never again live on land.”
I remembered the things I’d seen him battling in my dreams—creatures that had terrified me. “The calpa weren’t the only monsters you hunt.”
“The mortal realm is mostly water, not land, and there are many dangers beyond the shores. Our Gods chose us to be their guardians against the evil that hides within the waves.” He took my hands in his. “Just as yours chose you to stand against your sister.”
“I’m in love with you.” I didn’t care how silly it was to admit that; I’d been in love with him for years.
“I gave you my heart long ago. ’Tis still yours, and ever shall be.” He drew me to my feet, and took me in his arms. “Come with me and my clan, Deborah. Share our adventures, help us fight the darkness, and end my loneliness. Be my mate.”
I drew his head down to mine and kissed him, and it was better than any dream.
I stood by the window watching the stables until I saw Deb walking her horse over to a trough to water it. She looked windblown and rosy-cheeked, and she was wearing the McMaren’s cloak. I glanced at Caroline, who nodded.
In a strange way walking out to the stables felt like I was in a cap and gown, about to graduate and start a new
life. We all were, but Deb more than anyone. Part of me wanted to sulk and whine about how we’d just gotten her back, and it wasn’t fair. But as I got closer and I saw her face, I knew she’d finally found her dream. It was time for her to graduate us, and start a new life with Sinclair.
“Don’t even say it,” I said when I joined her at the fence. As she grimaced I threw my arms around her. “Congrats. I mean it. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” She drew back and let out a slightly wobbly breath. “Don’t make me cry.”
“I’m the only one who never has,” I reminded her, and held out my hand to stroke the nose of a foal who had come over to see us. “When?”
“First thing tomorrow morning. We sail with the tide.” She put her head on my shoulder. “I probably won’t be back for a while, but I’ll visit whenever we’re close.”
“You better.” I turned around as the rest of the squad surrounded us. “Deb’s going to sail around the world with Sinful. Let’s give her a proper send-off.”
We formed a huge circle around Deb to do our victory dance. As we jumped and clapped we called out, “Angels, we play to win, Angels, we’ll do it again, Angels, we own the sky, Angels, where might we fly?”
As we jumped and clapped and laughed, I knew the answer to that one, and so did Deb: wherever our dreams would take us.
THE END
From the Author
As I write this, it’s a wonderfully bright, crisp, and cool autumn day here in Los Angeles, but the Covid infection rate is the worst it’s ever been. My husband and I are in our ninth month of self-quarantine and doing well, and vaccines are on the horizon.
As the severity of the pandemic became clear last March, I wanted to do something special for the wonderful people who’ve joined my newsletter and supported my work over the years. So I did what came naturally—I wrote. Every week for 36 weeks, I sent a new short story.
