She heard a click and then the movement of a hinge.
Her fingers clung to the top of a settee as she peeked over its edge and watched the French doors. One of the doors swung slowly open into the Library.
Serafina felt the hair on the back of her neck rising.
She spotted a dark hooded figure slipping into the room.
She knew she shouldn’t be scared. She was the Guardian of Biltmore! She had been expecting this! But it didn’t matter. She was terrified.
Her heart pounded now. Her chest tightened something fierce, her lungs started pumping, wanting more air, and the muscles in her arms and legs bunched for action.
The dark figure coming into the house pulled back its hood and looked quickly around the room to make sure it was empty. It was Rowena. Her hair lay in a jumble around her shoulders in an unusually unkempt fashion. Her face was smudged with soot and slime. Her eyes scanned the darkness. Serafina could see that it was the sorceress, so she knew she shouldn’t be frightened, but she was. Every pore of her body was slowly filling with dread. Rowena looked so different from the last time they had spoken. Everything about her reminded Serafina not of the ally she’d been working with over the last few days, but the dark and mysterious druid girl she’d seen by the river, the young sorceress of the forest, the caster of spider spells, and the speaker to the dead. Serafina knew she should trust her new friend, knew that they had come up with the plan together, but she couldn’t stop thinking that everything about the girl she was seeing now oozed a dark and wicked treachery.
Rowena whispered something to someone just outside the door. The sorceress wasn’t alone.
Just stay steady, Serafina told herself. Just stay very still. But her heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it was going to give her away.
Rowena whispered again, bringing the person with her slowly into the house.
As she watched it, Serafina couldn’t believe that it was actually happening. Her hands balled into tight, shaking fists.
She smelled the rotting, earthy stench of the creature first, and then heard the tick-tick-ticking sound of its gnashing teeth. Then she saw the long, dark, ragged coat, and the clawed hands protruding from the tattered sleeves. The mangled, bleeding face came into the room with glowing silver eyes. Serafina’s body flooded with cold fear. It was him! It was Uriah, coming right into the house!
“Come this way, Father,” Rowena whispered. “They’re all asleep…”
Serafina watched from behind the settee as Uriah looked slowly around the Library of Biltmore Estate, gazing up and around at all the books and fine furnishings—the secret inner sanctuary of his despised enemy.
Before Uriah had become the bent and hissing creature he was now, he had been the bearded man of the forest, a shrouded hermit whom day folk seldom saw. He had gathered his curses into sap-fueled cauldron fires up in the barren pinelands, but avoided face-to-face battles with his enemies. He never endangered himself. He was like a sniveling rat, a stinking polecat that stays hidden in the darkest depths of the forest. To attack his enemy, he would cast his spells from afar and send his demons into Biltmore to do his bidding. But this night, he had come. He was entering the very place he most wanted to destroy.
As Rowena led her father quietly into the darkened house, Uriah spoke in his low, gravelly voice. “Have you done everything we talked about?”
“Everything and more, Father,” Rowena said in an excited whisper. “It’s even better than we hoped.”
“Tell me,” Uriah rasped.
“You were exactly right. The cat and the boy had the silver clasp all along. But more than that, I now know that the boy can control the spiders.”
“What?” Uriah said harshly as he turned angrily toward his daughter in surprise and grabbed her by the throat. “You taught him how to cast the weaving spell?”
“No, no,” she gasped, clutching at his scaly hands, tightened around her neck. “Father, listen to me. I swear I didn’t! The boy doesn’t use spells. He has the power to befriend the creatures of the forest.”
“Like he did with the hawks and the wolves…” Uriah rasped as he released his daughter’s neck.
Still in human form, Serafina watched in amazement as Uriah and Rowena spoke. She knew that Uriah could cast powerful spells and that the Twisted Staff he had created had allowed him to control animals by force at close range, but he seemed to envy Braeden’s natural power. He and his daughter had once enslaved many of the forest’s creatures, but even he couldn’t claim the true and constant alliance of the wolves, the elk, and the other animals.
“Who’s inside the house now?” Uriah asked. “Where is the usurper and his woman?”
“The Vanderbilts have gone, Father,” she said. “Your storms have pushed them out.”
“What about the Black One and the other catamount?”
“They’re out patrolling the grounds, but I know the path they take. I waited until they were on the other side of the estate, miles away, before I brought you in.”
“So, it is just the boy,” Uriah said greedily. “We’ll leave his bloody dead body on the floor for the usurpers to find when they return.”
“We need to make them suffer, Father,” Rowena hissed, “for all that they have done to us.”
“And do these others trust you?” Uriah asked.
“They’re fools, Father,” the young sorceress said. “Even the cat trusts me this time. I pretended like I was conflicted about right and wrong, like I didn’t know which path to follow, and then when I told them the secret of the black widow spiders, that clinched it.”
“What about the cloak?”
“The boy and I have been working on it day and night,” Rowena said. “The boy and his spiders have made the fabric, and I have used the spells you taught me to bind the darkness and suck in souls. But I must tell you, Father, the cloak is far more powerful than anything we’ve made before.”
“More powerful?” he asked, his eyes widening. Serafina could hear the envy seething in his voice. “Where is the cloak now?”
“It’s here in the house, Father, but they’ve locked it away. I can’t get to it on my own. I need your help.”
Uriah nodded, very pleased. “We’ll take the cloak first and then we’ll kill the boy.”
“This way,” Rowena whispered, leading him out of the Library and into the Tapestry Gallery.
As they walked, Uriah put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder, a glint of pride contorting his nasty face. He looked as if he was more than pleased with his daughter’s talent for treachery, her ruthless and conniving ability to change herself into whatever he needed her to be. Good or evil, dark-haired or fair, human or animal, she was the consummate shifter. His other demons and devices had been flawed, but his apprentice daughter! She was his most perfect creation.
Serafina ducked down into the darkest shadow she could find as Uriah and Rowena walked past her, his earthen stench wafting toward her like the odorous, twisting branches of a diseased and rotting tree.
Suddenly, Uriah stopped in midstride and looked around him.
Serafina froze, her heart pounding.
“What is it, Father?” Rowena whispered.
“Stay quiet,” Uriah ordered her, as he listened into the darkness.
Serafina watched from her hiding spot behind the settee as he slowly turned his head and his silver eyes scanned each and every shadow in the long moonlit gallery.
She wanted to flee, right then, just get up and run like the dickens, but she knew she mustn’t move or make a sound. She stayed exactly where she was, watching from the shadows of the room.
Uriah tilted his head and sniffed the air, like a predator picking up the scent of its prey.
A pain filled Serafina’s chest. Her lungs wanted to breathe, to gasp in rapid gulps of air, but she could not let them, for a hurried breath would kill her now.
Stay very still, she told herself.
She pulled back just a little farther into the
darkness, trying to settle her thumping heart and her buzzing legs so that he could not feel her there.
He sniffed the air again.
“She’s here…” he rasped in a low, hissing whisper.
“Who’s here?” Rowena asked.
“The Black One…” he said.
“Where?” Rowena asked, looking around them.
“She’s here, in this house right now…” he whispered. He began moving with a slow and creeping deliberateness among the low tables and soft chairs where she was hiding, his scaly clawed hands raised and crooked like a praying mantis.
“She’s in this very room…” he rasped.
He began to search behind each piece of furniture, dragging it aside, then going to the next.
He was coming her way.
“THERE!” he screamed, pointing to her.
Serafina broke cover and tried to run.
Serafina burst away and sprinted down the length of the gallery, running as fast as she could. Uriah rushed toward her with terrifying speed. The air around her concussed with shaking force. All she could hear behind her was the pushing of the furniture as he shoved it aside and the violent clicking of his gnashing teeth.
As she turned the corner out of the room and dashed across the main hall, she felt a blast of burning air fly past her. The glass on the old grandfather clock cracked, and the wood sides caught on fire.
She ducked down the corridor and darted across the Salon, jumping a chaise lounge as Uriah came barreling around the corner and threw a spell that smashed through the room, toppling everything in its path, and crashed through the far windows with an explosion of glass.
Her chest heaved in rapid breaths as she ran. Her arms pumped. Her legs buzzed with speed. She wanted to change into panther form so bad, but the time had not yet come.
Behind her, she heard the ferocious, attacking growl of Waysa tearing into the room. She glanced back just in time to see the fanged catamount leap upon Uriah’s back, biting him and clawing him, pulling at him.
Waysa slowed Uriah down just enough to let Serafina get ahead. But then Uriah slammed Waysa’s body into a stone pillar and the catamount collapsed to the floor.
Serafina’s heart wrenched when she saw Waysa go down, but she knew he had done what he’d come for, and now the rest was up to her.
She raced away as fast as she could in the moments Waysa had given her. As she scurried through the Breakfast Room, the creature came right behind her, throwing a fireball that lit up the room with blazing orange light and set the leather wallpaper on fire.
There was less than a second between life and death.
Finally, she darted through the door that led into the Banquet Hall.
She’d made it!
She was exactly where she needed to be at exactly the right moment.
As she turned the corner out of sight and ran past the room’s three giant fireplaces, she shifted into panther form. She leapt straight up the far wall, clung to the priceless Flemish tapestry with her claws, climbed it with tearing speed, and sprang through the air toward the window, which Braeden had opened for her just moments before.
But the window was far too small for a panther, so she shifted into human form in midair and landed on the windowsill. Unlike normal windows, these small, seldom-noticed windows at the top of the Banquet Hall didn’t go outside, but to a back corridor of an upper floor high above.
“Here it is,” Braeden said, handing her the coiling, hissing Black Cloak, just like they had planned. “Go!”
Grabbing the cloak, she sprinted down the length of the upper corridor, looping back behind where she expected Uriah to be, and came to a second window that looked down into the Banquet Hall. It was similar to the window she’d leapt into, but there was a reason she’d chosen this spot in the house.
Rowena had lured Uriah into Biltmore just as they had planned. Waysa had attacked him at just the right moment to slow him down. Braeden had been ready with the cloak right where they had agreed. And now Serafina was positioned directly over the door that Uriah was coming through as he entered the Banquet Hall in search of her.
Seeing Uriah below her, Serafina leapt.
As she fell through the air she stretched out the Black Cloak in her arms, coming down on Uriah like a giant black bat. But as she came down, she realized her timing was off and she was going to miss him. If she’d been in her panther form she could have used the twist of her tail to change the angle of her attack in midair, but she needed to be in her human form to hold the cloak. And now she was going to fall uselessly to the floor behind him. But in the moment of her fall, she used her new powers to shift the air around her with a violent push, and for a split second she wasn’t just controlling the movement of the air, she was the air itself. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, she thought. I am human and panther. I am body and spirit. I am all things in the darkness.
Her timing was perfect. Just as Uriah came through the doorway, she fell directly upon him and pulled the inner folds of the open cloak over his head and shoulders.
Uriah screamed in rage.
As Serafina landed on his back, he thrashed and struggled, and then heaved himself backward, slamming her into the stone of the fireplace, but she held on to him for dear life. I am spirit! she thought, pushing through the crushing pain. I am power!
She hung on and she kept hanging on. It was like grabbing a huge, wriggling, biting rat: once you had it, you couldn’t let go. You had to grip it, strangle it, do anything you had to do, but you COULD NOT LET GO!
She pulled and pulled the cloak, Uriah’s head tossing wildly, his arms pushing, his scaly clawed hands clutching blindly around him as he screamed in outrage. He was Uriah, the sorcerer, the master of the forest, the controller of all! He was not going to let this happen!
Suddenly, he began to spin around and around, roaring with a terrible sound as a dirty swirl of darkness poured out of his mouth. He was going to rip himself free. But Serafina pulled in the power of the elements around her, drawing forth a forceful wind from the air, lifting the ashes from the fireplaces up and around them in a great whirling motion.
Their two swirling forces crashed against each other, pushing in opposite directions, each one spinning and twisting against the other until the swirling motion came to a shuddering stop. She held Uriah as still as death with nothing but the force of her will.
Then she heard it.
I’m not going to hurt you, child…the cloak said in its hissing, raspy voice.
The folds of the cloak slithered around Uriah like the tentacles of a hungry serpent. The cloak moved of its own accord, wrapping, twisting, accompanied by a disturbing rattling noise, like the hissing threats of a hundred rattlesnakes. Uriah’s horrified face looked out at her from within the folds of the enveloping cloak. She realized then that everything had come full circle. It was just as she had once seen Clara Brahms vanish into the Black Cloak. But instead of Clara’s innocent bright blue eyes looking desperately out at her for help, Uriah’s eyes were consumed with hatred and streaked with all-consuming fear. Then the folds closed over him, the scream went silent, and the man disappeared, body and soul.
Serafina and the cloak fell to the floor. She quickly scurried away from it so that its greedy black folds couldn’t get her.
For several seconds, the cloak vibrated violently, and a ghoulish aura glowed in a dark, shimmering haze. A horribly foul smell of rotting guts invaded Serafina’s nostrils, forcing her head to jerk back. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to breathe it in.
Suddenly, the cloak clenched into a tight wrenching coil, and an explosion of magical spells burst into the room, sending fireballs and lightning bolts and explosions of ice-cold air in all directions at once. The spears and shields on the walls clattered to the floor. The panther-torn tapestry and its cousins crumpled down. The flags caught fire. The statues tumbled. The entire room filled with a thick, choking smoke.
And then it was finally done.
Serafina jum
ped up to her feet, still panting, still filled with fear, and she looked around the room. Uriah was gone. She had captured him in the endless void of the Black Cloak. She had finally defeated the man who could not be killed!
She pulled in a long, shaky breath and exhaled, trying not to burst into tears of relief. A pure cool pleasure poured through the cavities of her lungs and the muscles of her legs. She looked around at the devastated, ash-filled, burning room and all she could feel was joy.
“We did it!” Braeden cheered, leaning out the window above her head and pumping his fist triumphantly even as he stamped out one of the burning wall tapestries with a towel.
That was when she came to her senses enough to realize that the room was truly on fire.
She did not run. She did not panic. Her powers had been growing within her, and she felt stronger now than she ever had. She concentrated her mind, raised her hand into a fist above her, then threw her hand down in a sudden opening motion, and shouted, “Enough!”
The entire room burst with cold air. Every speck of ashen dust hit the floor. Every flame blew out. And the room was still.
“That worked a lot better than my towel!” Braeden shouted happily from the window.
Waysa came limping into the room, bleeding, but with a grin on his face. “I told you to run like the wind, Serafina! I thought for sure he was going to get you there at the last second!”
“Not with you on his back, my friend,” Serafina said happily.
Behind Waysa, Rowena was walking into the room as well. Seeing that the sorceress and her other friends were all right, Serafina smiled and then laughed, euphoric with the realization that they had all survived.
But Rowena looked warily at the Black Cloak lying in a heap on the floor of the Banquet Hall right where Serafina had left it.
“It’s done now,” Serafina said, trying to reassure her.
Rowena slowly lifted her eyes and looked at Serafina. When she spoke, there was no sarcasm in her tone, no aloofness or airs, no whispers or seething voice, just a flat, steady seriousness. “Now we must make certain that this cloak never sees the light of day.”
Serafina and the Splintered Heart Page 23
