Bride of the Stone: Circle of Nine Trilogy 2

by Josephine Pennicott

  About Bride of the Stone: Circle of Nine Trilogy 2

  Despite Emma Develle’s best efforts, the sacred Eom crystal has started to recharge, throwing the magical Goddess-worshipping world of Eronth into deadly turmoil. Meanwhile, Maya, daughter of Emma and the mysterious Stag Man, is raised to womanhood oblivious to both her identity and destiny in the struggle to come.

  Maya finds herself in a world threatened with destruction. The sinister Lightcaster feeds off the Eom’s dark energy to orchestrate bloody witch-hunts; the Sea Hags fulfil ancient prophecies by invading the land; and the Azephim dark angels scheme to realise their dreams of supremacy by harnessing the Eom’s power and Maya’s future. Amid this chaos Maya begins on a long road to self-discovery, helped by the Wizards of the Circle of Nine, freed after thousands of years trapped in stone.

  On Earth, Emma’s house is occupied by a New-Age cult whose leader’s esoteric powers are frighteningly real. But he knows little about his own angelic lineage and even less about the Azephim and other dangerous entities drawn to the house’s portal between the worlds.

  Maya’s destiny unfolds as she falls in love with Bwani, leader of the Circle of Nine – but are their combined powers enough to stop the dark forces destroying not only Eronth, but Earth too?

  ‘Josephine Pennicott has an incredible capacity for story-telling, first-hand knowledge of Wicca, and an in-depth familiarity with mythology; a sure-fire combination which makes for compelling reading.’ WITCHCRAFT MAGAZINE

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Eronth

  Prologue

  Part One: Waxing Moon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Part Two: Full Moon

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part Three: Waning Moon

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Characters

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  About Josephine Pennicott

  Also by Josephine Pennicott

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated to David Levell.

  PROLOGUE:

  The Tomb Goddess grieves alone

  Her mourning halts the tides, freezes waves.

  The known worlds rejoice as one at her sacrifice

  The man slayer begins an endless fall

  And Crossas are given baptisms of fire

  (so it is — it has to be).

  Yea — the seasons are strange,

  Watch black ice fall from the skies, from the suns,

  The Ghormho embraces the Tomb Goddess and blood laces the dark one’s wings.

  Out of the mouths of children—

  Tongues fall

  The old songs are mourned

  The old ways are lost

  And the golden serpent chokes the worlds.

  Blessed are you who perceive the heartbeat of the stones

  Blessed be he who remembers the tale.

  The child of the Horned God awakens the sleeping stone

  Whilst the hags of the water realms grow feet to walk upon the land.

  Black stone, endless night

  A hero will come, will answer the call

  And the Dreamers awake.

  — Condensed from the Tremite Book of Life, Column IX X 100

  I pray that Love may never come to me

  With murderous intent

  In rhythms measureless and wild.

  Not fire nor stars have stronger bolts

  Than those of Aphrodite, sent

  By the hands of Eros, Zeus’s child.

  Love is like a flitting bee in the world’s garden

  And for its flowers, destruction is in his breath

  — Chorus of Palace Women, Hippolytus of Euripides

  The man did not die quickly. He had died in agony, he had died in panic, his face contorted with fear. His body parts were scattered over the earth, a grisly testament to the vicious battle of his last moments. His sacred red blood soaked the hungry soil.

  A running stream gurgled nearby, its sound a song of lost hope, of endless tears. The vegetation was lush in this holy grove. Yet the purity and sweetness of the air could not mask more dominant odours of suffering and fear. Sunlight intruded on the macabre scene, but it was an unnatural light. Harsh copper-yellow. Vultures waited, surrounding his remains with starving, expectant eyes, but they had sense enough not to partake of the feast before them.

  Long before Tremite recorded time, long before the Dreamers had descended into the Shell, this grove had been a place of great beauty, of powerful civilisations. Now it knew only terror and suffering. The woods surrounding this grove were silent, for they had kept their secrets well over time.

  The Goddess entered the grove silently, walking on brown, bare feet. Silver-grey mist hung low over the ground. Wind elementals swooped through air, dancing with the breeze, but even they knew not to approach the sacred clearing too closely. The heartbeat of the Goddess could be clearly heard, magnified in the unnatural silence. Although she was heavily veiled, it was impossible to fully disguise her sensuality and beauty. The sharp tang of the sea clung to her veiled form. With small faltering steps, she approached the scattered body parts. She was known by many different names in different worlds throughout recorded time. In this world and time and tale, she was the Goddess of the Tombs, the manslayer: Aphrodite. Raising her arms above her head, she released a wild scream to the Fates, reproaching them for permitting this sacrifice of her lover. Dropping to her knees, she sobbed piteously into the earth, calling to Persephone in the Underground, warning the Kore of a new arrival.

  From under her cloak, she produced two golden magical caskets, tracing with her fingers the intricate engravings of vines that encircled them. She glanced around warily. Although there was no-one to witness her agony, she could sense the Tremite Scribes recording the event. She sobbed harder, great aching sobs that came from the depths of her being.

  Quickly, trying not to think of her task, she picked up the bloody pieces of her lover, and pushed them into the two magical caskets. Despite their small size, the containers easily accommodated the mangled lumps of flesh. She shook with anguish as she completed her task.

  Her grief produced a ripple effect around all the kno
wn worlds. Lovers everywhere sensed Aphrodite’s torture, and lover turned on lover, with fists, knives, words and guns. The man did not die quickly. He had died in agony, and his last thought had been of her. This she knew to be true when she gathered his brains with trembling honey-brown hands, closing her eyes to receive his last moments.

  With reverence she placed his brains inside the casket. Despite her pain, the age-old ritual would have to be enacted. One casket would be carried to the sea, one casket given to Persephone in the Underground. She began to cry again, a lone divine witness to the agonies he had undergone. Through a freezing, eternal night, a stone lion woke and roared.

  PART ONE

  WAXING MOON

  CHAPTER ONE

  Leura, Blue Mountains, Australia

  The house had been empty for what seemed an interminable length of time. It stood silently, expectantly, with no lights shining through its windows to reflect that living beings moved within it. On one windowpane a small child’s handprint was framed by the thick coat of dust — proof the house had been touched recently — and voluminous cobwebs had begun to weave their binding around the house’s framework. No letters had been delivered to the mailbox, which had been quickly claimed by the spider kingdom. Weeds flourished and gained domination in the garden, and fruit from the few trees lay rotting on the ground, half eaten by small animals and shared with dream-like beings who emerged from the walls of the house. Neighbours in the surrounding mountain towns tended to avoid the house.

  Years ago, an old woman who lived in this house had been mysteriously murdered, her body discovered on a lonely bush track, drained of blood. Her niece had then suffered some form of heart attack in the house’s garden, and thus whispers and dark shadows had begun to form around the house.

  Despite its loneliness, there was a presence about the house. Even the most sceptical of locals would acknowledge this truth, by hurrying past if their business happened to be near, which rarely it ever did. Their eyes would avoid the house and for a second, their hearts would beat faster.

  Not all forms of life avoided the house, however. Owls nestled in the branches outside, snakes slept undisturbed in the garden, and bees made their hives and watched with uncaring eyes as shadows moved and became flesh.

  Perhaps the house stayed thus, eldritch, estranged, unloved by humankind for hundreds of years, or perhaps just a few months, or a few heartbeats. The house had no knowledge of time and so could not record the passing seasons. All that it knew was a deep terrible desire to be filled, to be occupied.

  Inside the suffering house, dustsheets covered the furniture and paintings. Once pristine white, they were now grey. The air was unpleasant, musty for being engirded for so long, and those sensitive to such things might be able to sniff the odour of terror, of anguish, perhaps even the sound of a heart breaking. Such were the impressions left behind by the previous occupant, yet no human voice sounded in the air to break the uneasy silence that held the house captive. There were, however, shadows that came to life and moved through the rooms.

  A large unfinished mural in the living area of the house provided a point of access for those able to slip silently between different worlds. Demonic beings unimagined, flowering from nightmares, angels with wings and hearts of fire, and shadows walking silently through the house, vanishing through walls, into air, into dust.

  One of these shadows was a young child, Rachel. She would float down the corridors of the house before swooping outside to sit under the sun, the rain, the wind. She would amuse herself for hours with a child’s swing fashioned from her mind and built of light, the rope creaking slightly, her small lifeless face lifted to the sun as she pushed herself into the sky. The house could hear snatches of the haunting songs she would sing as she sat in this fashion, songs that formed the wind, the change of seasons, and were never heard by human ears. The house didn’t care for beings that lived in its walls and could change into birds. It longed to feel the tread of human feet and the warmth of a human heart, although there were no human ears to record the sound of the house’s longing, and its corridors contained only shadows. No hand ever reached out to knock on the dragon doorknocker. It lay covered in dust, dust as thick as the memories unswept, and undisturbed, that scattered over the house. Dirt entangled with broken hopes and dreams.

  Yet, all the above was about to change.

  *

  His name was Larry Owens.

  Ever since he was a small child, Larry sensed he possessed a power over other people. He could see the radiant colours of their auras and their chakra wheels spinning, and when he first learned to talk, long before he could read the printed word, he could read minds. At eight, he had sent his mother into hysterics when he had accurately described a grey spirit hanging from her, a description that matched her brother, who had shot himself before Larry was born.

  His parents attempted to treat him like a normal child, but Larry was anything but. His extraordinary beauty, and his electric radiant blue eyes, ensured he differed greatly from those around him.

  ‘Wasted on a boy!’ his mother’s friends would exclaim, admiring his face, as they tucked into lamingtons and egg sandwiches. His hair was white-blond, his parents were dark. He refused to trim or cut his hair, growing hysterical if he saw scissors approaching. It grew past his shoulders, inviting scorn from his classmates. He was taller than the other children, towering over them in classes. Larry was bright academically, but too easily bored, feeling his studies were far beneath him. He would stare into people, a habit disconcerting to others around him, and he could lose concentration for hours at a time, as he stared into space. Larry moved through life like white lightning, menacing in his supernatural beauty.

  When he was very young, he began reliving memories of past incarnations, or what he took to be possible past incarnations. He saw great beings who came to watch over him at night. Like Larry, these beings were also tall, with white hair hanging down their backs. They radiated love, strength, and beauty. Larry had forgotten the tongue to speak with them, and so he would lie still in his bed, eyes wide, lost in the magnificence before him.

  Near the tall beings stood figures with golden amulets in their hands, who would drop to their knees when the high ones entered the room. Larry understood that these beings would not harm him. Instead they had come to offer some form of support and healing. Some nights they held grey cords in their hands laced with gold thread. They would pass them over his body, and he would sink rapidly into a deep healing sleep.

  There was another nightly visitor who entered his room, though only a few times compared to his shining people. The Horn Man, Larry christened him. This figure would sniff the air daintily as he entered, the antlers atop his head gigantic, and his huge golden brown eyes shining in the darkness. The Horn Man’s eyes had an hypnotic effect on Larry; he found it impossible to look away. A faint musky scent clung to the Horn Man, the odour of fresh bracken and summer skies. His face was the face of a man, but he had the body of a stag. He always followed the same ritual when the night opened to allow his entrance. He would approach the staring child, sniff him carefully, and leave. Some nights he exited by the open window, squeezing his body through, lurching himself into the night, losing himself quickly into stars, into blackness, sleep and dreams. On other nights he chose to exit quietly from Larry’s bedroom door, making his way through the house.

  As Larry grew the nightly visits from these beings ceased. The night breathed to him only the familiar creatures of its own, and he came to regard these half-forgotten experiences as dreams.

  Larry had been a handsome child. ‘He’s going to be a heart-breaker! his mother’s friends had clucked, when they sat over cups of coffee, in front of vapid soap operas. ‘If I was a bit younger, I’d have a pop at him myself!’ They would wink at his mother, who would laugh uproariously. But their eyes had flared with a strange intensity when they looked at him. Hunger. Even at that tender age, they could sense his blood and they were hungry. Dumb starving
beasts, he had thought, mocking them as they sat complacently amid their illusions of television and dieting and cigarettes.

  There was a huge distance between Larry and his father — he had always sensed he was a disappointment to the old man. He would have better appreciated a son more like himself, interested in the TAB, footy, fishing and guns. Larry often caught his father studying him with hostility, and he could hear the thoughts clearly. A shame I’ve got this pansy for a son, with his long curling white hair and pretty face. He’s sure as hell going to grow up to be a poofter. The thought pattern snaked its way around the house constantly. Larry knew that his father’s fears were groundless. He would not grow up to be a homosexual. He was bisexual, he had always been comfortable with this fact, truly seeing it as perfectly natural. But he had no doubt that if his father knew, he would have shot him.

  There were affairs, many affairs with both sexes. From the moment his mathematics teacher had reached for him with hunger in his eyes, Larry had allowed himself to wallow in the pleasures of the flesh, knowing neither guilt nor shame in the act.

  He had been a serious child, often mocked by his peers when he was young. One of his earliest ambitions had been to become a monk, as he had longed for the pristine stability and strength of the Church. Attending Mass, kneeling for hours while his knees bled, he had prayed for the redemption of the world, while his father looked on, grim-faced, tapping his fat red fingers, as the poofter snake continued to writhe throughout the house.

  Nuns, their black veils flapping behind them, golden crosses around their necks, would sometimes visit the Owens home for dinner. Larry’s father was barely able to contain his contempt when they talked about Larry’s innocence and light, his potential to be a servant of Christ.

  He was both shunned and loved by his peers, as they sensed his blood, his difference from them. There were no close friends as the years passed, but his associates recognised instinctively that something preternatural stood near them. It altered their physiology, their heartbeat, their blood chemistry. Making them hunger.

  Despite his numerous affairs, his heart remained a stone, cold and dark, heavy in his chest. He knew without knowing that these were not his people. If he ever cried, longing for the unseen that he felt, there was never anyone to witness it.