His smile grew into a grin of pure satisfaction. He savored the moment before turning hastily back toward the clearing. There would be time for self-congratulation later.
The sack lay in the center, right where he had left it. As he approached, he pulled a five-inch wooden rod from his cloak, which he then stabbed into the ground. It extended into a standing torch about five feet tall. Fire blossomed at the tip, warming his face.
It was a monstrous sight; his skin was pale and paper-thin, making his face look like a bloodless mask. Blue, threadlike veins ran rampant across its surface. His eyes were black slits embedded in nests of wrinkles.
He looked up and read the stars. “Twenty minutes,” he said. “You fools had better not be late.”
He brought his thumb and middle finger to his mouth, and blew a long, high whistle across the sky—one which took on a life of its own. Even as Querrigan busied himself with the contents of the sack, the whistle continued to spread for miles. It kept to the sky, where no one down below would hear it—no humans, and especially not them, the ones he had come for.
Querrigan forgot about the dogs, though.
“Damn me to the underworld,” he said.
CHAPTER 3
M iles away from the Banks’ residence on 27 Alcott Street, a slender man stood on a warehouse roof. His youthful face gleamed like marble in the moonlight. His dark hair, long and perfectly straight, wisped about his shoulders, lightly brushing the stems of his black wings.
He wasn’t alone. Grinning, he watched a young woman as she tried, in her weakened state, to drag herself away. She was sobbing. One hand was clamped around her neck. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the man, especially those hideous black things sticking out of his back. All she had wanted was to come up here and deal with her misery alone, the way she always did, with a needle and a prayer to the god she felt had abandoned her.
You’re so stupid, Alana, she told herself. You had to throw it all away…
God wasn’t coming for her. Her sins had guaranteed that. Tonight, it had been the devil that came, flying down on wings as black as coal.
“Please,” she said. “Let me go. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m sorry. I want to live!”
“Oh, shush,” the man said. “If I let you go, you’ll tell the world about me. You’ll do it to feel special, like your kind always does. Your story would probably even make money, which, of course, you would just use to buy the very poison I can taste on my lips right now.”
“No, no!” She shook her head violently. “I won’t tell anyone what you did to me. And—and I’ll stop using. I swear to God!”
“God?” The man began to chuckle.
It was useless. Alana pulled her hand away from her neck and inspected her palm. The stain was black in this light. Blood tickled her neck as it ran down into her shirt. The man licked his lips, and Alana clamped her hand back over the wound. It was the blood he wanted. Her blood.
He’s the devil. The devil himself…
She drew back as the demon took a few steps toward her.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m doing you a favor. How many of your kind ever live to see someone like me?” He extended his wings, each one twice the length of his arms. Then his smile fell away. “Enough prattle. Let’s finish what we started, shall we?”
He approached again, but then stopped as a chorus of barks and howls rose in every direction. Dogs. Hundreds of them, maybe every single one in Dearborn.
And they had all gone insane.
The demon cocked one ear toward the sky, as if listening beyond all that clamoring. “The whistle,” he said. “Finally.”
Alana bit back a whimper as he focused on her again. He was going to kill her, and maybe she deserved it. After all the lies she’d told, all the people she had hurt. If only she could do it over again, she would do it clean.
It wasn’t too late, either. If she could walk out of here tonight, she would go see her daughter, Franny, only eight years old. She would visit the home they had placed her in, after that terrible trial with that vicious judge, and she would grab her and escape, just go on the road, clean and sober, not needing anyone else in their lives…
“Just get away from me,” she begged. “Please. Please!”
The demon seemed to ignore her. Now, he was walking backward towards the roof’s edge. Maybe the dogs had scared him. Maybe this was her second chance.
“Well, so long,” he said. “It’s been a treat.”
Alana’s heart did a somersault. “Thank you. Oh, God, thank you so much!”
The demon stopped, frowning all of a sudden. “There’s that name again,” he said, mystified. “Of which god do you speak?”
“The…the…” Alana’s throat locked up. “The one…”
“Ah, it doesn’t matter,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Thank whomever you’d like, but don’t thank me. I’m only the boatman, sending you on the journey we must all take eventually.”
Fear seized her chest. Alana could barely breathe.
He was sending her? Sending her where, exactly?
The demon bent over and picked something up. It was the needle Alana had been about to use on herself, to take away the pain of living, which now seemed like nothing at all compared to her fear.
Raising it, the demon winked at her, as if they were sharing a private joke. Then he stabbed it into his own arm.
“My blood is poison to your kind,” he said, and then plucked out the needle. “Can’t have any witnesses, now, can we?”
Alana could only watch in terror as he positioned himself like an expert dart thrower. When it dawned on her what would happen next, she raised her arms and screamed.
The needle hit her squarely in the chest, a familiar sting.
Then all was silent again.
When Alana opened her eyes, the demon was gone. She yanked out the needle and tossed it away. A flapping of wings drew her gaze to the sky.
All she saw were stars.
A constellation, almost like a child’s face.
Franny.
Franny had always loved those stars. She’d been a dreamer, just like her mother. Hopefully, those dreams would never change, never turn into the nightmares that had driven Alana to this very rooftop, in search of…
What, exactly?
Franny, she thought, what have I done?
She ached to hear her daughter’s voice again. Just one last time.
Instead, all she heard were the dogs.
The convulsions began a moment later.
AS HE FLEW above the clouds, Coscoros licked the last traces of blood from his lips.
Just to be sure, he dove into a mass of gray. He let himself glide through the refreshing mist, let the moisture collect on his skin, then used it to wipe his hands and the area around his mouth. Just in case.
He had been careful tonight, but Querrigan was a sour old man who didn’t take kindly to his soldiers trifling with humans—or engaging in certain indulgences of the sort better left unmentioned at dinner parties. Even if their blood was delicious. And with the mission they had embarked on tonight, Coscoros would be a fool to challenge the Knight-Captain’s wishes.
He followed the whistle across town, toward a forest where an old man and a very expensive stone waited for him—one that held the answers his fellow soldiers had died for, on battlefields too numerous to count.
CHAPTER 4
Q uerrigan’s whistle cut through the clouds above the eastern part of town.
Up in that airy expanse, a muscular, gray-skinned man wearing studded leather armor rode a giant hornet. He was easily seven feet tall, the insect as large as a black bear. The frost coating his bald head sparkled in the moonlight, as did the ice chunks embedded in his beard, which was braided like that of an ancient Viking.
But the cold didn’t bother him. The only thing he felt, other than a mild ache in his thighs from riding, was the urge to swing the warhammer slung across his massive back. The we
apon looked exactly like the name implied—a giant, two-faced hammer with a spike on the business end for charging enemies in battle. He and the weapon had spilled blood on a hundred battlefields back in Astros.
That was why everyone called him Basher. Even he barely remembered his real name.
The hornet’s buzzing almost drowned out the Knight-Captain’s whistle. Basher tapped the insect’s head, right between its hubcap eyes. “Quiet, Drone.”
The buzzing stopped as the hornet stilled its wings. The pair began to fall, and now, with that infernal buzzing gone, Basher could hear the whistle as clearly as he could hear himself shouting in rage. “Not that quiet, you stupid bug! Keep flying!”
He held on tightly as the buzzing resumed, and the insect took flight again. Shaking his head in irritation, he reached back and pulled the warhammer out of its harness. With eyes that saw perfectly well in low light, he picked out the airplane he had been following for the past ten minutes.
“There,” he said, pointing. “We’re close.”
The hornet altered its course. As they neared the craft, he read the words Air Atlantic printed on its side. It was a passenger flight full of men, women, and children, all of them neatly packed inside. They were even arranged in rows.
“Get closer,” he said, readying the weapon. “Near the wing.”
The hornet responded to his commands without hesitation. They approached the plane from behind. He relished the delicious heat from its propellers.
When they were just below the plane’s left wing, Basher hoisted the warhammer and braced himself. Then, filling his lungs with hot, machine-tempered air, he pulled it back and swung with all his might.
The propeller burst in a spray of metal, fire, and smoke. The heated debris washed harmlessly against his face, feeling like the fires and shrapnel of a battlefield. He savored the moment. Now, with only the aircraft’s right propeller functioning, the craft couldn’t keep itself aloft. It dipped and wavered before veering downward into a cloud. Eventually, it crashed with a loud boom, its orange explosion blossoming upward like flames he had seen once from a battlemage’s spell.
He slid the warhammer back into its harness, then rapped his knuckles between the hornet’s eyes.
“We had our fun. Let’s go see the captain.”
CHAPTER 5
Q uerrigan shook his head, annoyed.
At least the dogs had shut up. All around him, the clearing was quiet and still. Then something shifted in the air. He felt it, like an electric current across his skin.
“You’re late, Lieutenant,” he said into the emptiness. “You know I hate that.”
The Dark Acolyte landed with a heavy thump. He wiped moisture from his face and strode over.
“Knight-Captain.” He nodded. “I swear the stars in this world are spread differently.”
“They’re exact twins, you idiot. A mirror dimension.”
Coscoros sighed. “I’ll never understand the duality of our realms.”
Nearby in the darkness, leaves crunched and twigs snapped. They were the sounds of a many-legged creature walking across the underbrush. A hornet the size of a levathon appeared, followed by a hulking Berserker wearing a warhammer across his back.
“Not very subtle,” Querrigan said. “Those things make a lot of noise.”
The hornet dipped its head, moonlight glinting off its large, glassy eyes.
“Apologies, Knight-Captain,” Basher said. “It was the only shell that could hold my weight.”
“The plane that fell,” Querrigan said. “That was you?”
“Yes, sir. You said to call attention away from our mission, so that’s exactly what I did. Unlike this one over here,” he pointed at Coscoros, “who drinks blood from the humans and leaves their corpses for the lawbringers to find.”
Coscoros stiffened slightly. “I did no such thing.”
“Is that right? I can smell filthy human blood on you right now, in fact.”
“You’ll be smelling Berserker blood soon enough.”
“Quiet,” Querrigan snapped at them. “Our message awaits.”
He approached the artifact he had brought with him from Astros. He could have ordered Basher to remove the globe, heavy as it was, from the sack covering it. But Querrigan wanted to do it himself. He rolled it out, and then tossed the sack away.
He stood for a moment, gazing into the globe’s dark depths.
“Sir?” Basher said.
Querrigan snapped out of it and cleared his throat. “Pick it up,” he told the brute. “Rest it somewhere. A pedestal… Try the insect.”
Basher kicked the hornet. “Too round. Drone, try another shell.”
The insect shook itself like a dog after a bath, transforming its body in the process. The wings disappeared, sucked back into the shell with a dry, crackling noise. The head receded into the body, which took on a more triangular shape. It eventually came to resemble a chitinous suit of red armor.
The claws came next. They popped out from under its belly, unfolding as if they had been there all along. Massive lobster claws that made even Basher take a step back. Then a tail shot out of its backside, thickening and hardening even as it curled over its body. A deadly, hooked stinger took shape at its tip.
Now, they were all looking at a giant scorpion.
“So much for subtlety,” Coscoros said.
Basher lifted the globe onto the scorpion’s back, resting it in a shallow groove in the creature’s armor. They all gathered around it.
Querrigan addressed the group in an excited whisper. “Listen closely. Our scouts have detected magic in the human realm, right here in this very town.”
“Magic,” Basher said. “What kind, sir?”
“The man said to listen,” Coscoros snapped at him. “That means shut up.”
“An Acolyte healing spell. We detected traces of it, but not soon enough to pinpoint the location of the caster. By then, it was above the clouds. We know that it came from this town, and we have a vague notion of which part.”
He spread one of his knobby, spiderlike hands across the globe’s surface. “That was then. This is now. Gentlemen, we have in our possession a most-valuable device, different from all other sightstones. This one contains a core made of kronolith mineral. I’m sure all of you have heard of it.”
Eyes widened as Basher and Coscoros processed this new information.
“Time travel,” Basher said.
Querrigan nodded. “So to speak. Our sight will travel through the past.”
“Certainly, we’ll be able to see who cast the spell,” Coscoros said. “But kronolith burns fast. How much of it do we have?”
“Enough for a few days, a week at the most. That means coming back every night until the job is done, or we run out and are forced to find other means.” Querrigan pulled his hand off the stone and slipped it inside his cloak. “We must begin.” With that, he pulled a charged blood crystal out of a pocket. “Time, excuse the pun, is of the essence.”
He placed the crystal on the sightstone and draped his hand, almost protectively, over it. Then, he began to chant.
Basher elbowed Coscoros. “This is it,” the brute whispered, grinning. “If we succeed, we’ll be promoted.”
Coscoros crossed his arms and pinched his chin with two fingers. “Oh, this is more important than our careers.” He watched as glittering purple light grew in the stone’s core. “Much more important.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you figured it out? This much kronolith mineral—a king could sell it and buy a second castle. We’re not just hunting any old demigod. Whoever is hiding in that town, it’s someone from the history books.”
Querrigan shushed them. “It begins.”
They all stared at the light, the vision unraveling from its threads, opening a window into the recent past.
CHAPTER 6
Emma didn’t care much for birthdays.
She hated all the attention, for one. Then there was the
matter of sharing it with her twin brother, which meant that sometimes her parents bought one gift for both. Two years before, they had gotten them a Nintendo gaming console, which Emma played only once, though Milo became addicted to it and barely left the house that summer. Last year, they had taken Milo and Emma to the zoo, which led to Milo spouting facts the entire time about animal evolution and mating habits. Gross.
But Emma had to admit, this year had been a hundred times better.
Milo had bought her a new pair of dance shoes, just her size. Her mother and father had gotten her a one-hundred-dollar gift certificate to her favorite music store. Considering the money problems they’d been having, it was a ridiculously awesome gift.
And now here she was, throwing herself around the living room in her tights and new shoes, dancing without any actual music, content just to dream about the CDs she was going to buy, the routines she planned to master, and the plans she had made with her friends that weekend.
Life couldn’t be better—except for one thing: her stage fright was always in the back of her mind.
Emma had been dancing and singing since the age of four, and she was spectacular. Her mother had told her many times that she had a gift. Her father called it a God-given talent. But they were her parents. They were supposed to say stuff like that. And yet, Emma knew the truth. She was damned good at it.
Like, really good.
The only problem was that she couldn’t do it in front of people. Simple as that. Any time she performed in public, her mind and body would betray her, and she would become a shivering blob of jelly shaped like a person.
No one in her family—not even Milo, who knew her better than anyone else on Earth—could figure it out. Even Emma hadn’t the faintest idea what was wrong with her. Whenever she got up in front of anyone besides her mother, father, and brother—her only relatives, for reasons unknown to the Banks children—that familiar grip of anxiety would paralyze her entire body.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 3
