The Eternal Dusk (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Two)

by Victoria J. Price

  But then he heard Lorn’s voice say, “…and be quick about it, Erebus will be back soon.” The door slammed shut and the witches were alone.

  His friends were stuck down there with her. Alexander watched the witches walk out of the alley and turn onto the street beyond, ignoring Kit as they walked by him. You can’t go inside yet, not without a plan. Not without an idea that might actually work.

  Kit made one of his peculiar sounds and flicked his nose up towards Alexander before trotting off towards the street. Alexander didn’t waste time thinking about it, he followed from a safe distance, flying over buildings and buses and people hastily walking on the streets below.

  A narrow garden with an iron gate sat tucked down the side of a church, and Kit darted in between the metal railings. Weeds and yellow flowers poked up through a cobblestone path, and Alexander touched down a few metres from where Kit sat waiting. Behind him, the gate was padlocked, and up ahead, a black door with flaking paint was no doubt Kit’s goal.

  “Where are we, fox?” Alexander whispered. They were mostly in the shadows of the church, but people still walked by on the street beyond the gate. “We don’t have time for this, our friends need us.”

  Kit barked at him and flicked his nose up, before trotting towards the door and pushing his way through a flap near the base that Alexander hadn’t noticed before.

  “I can’t walk through walls, you know,” Alexander said quietly. There was no handle on the door, only a small keyhole. He gave a firm push, but nothing happened. He stepped back a few paces, ready to throw himself at the door when Kit reappeared through the flap with something hanging from his mouth. A key.

  “Nice work, Kit, thank you.” Alexander picked up the bronze key from where the fox had dropped it and realised how much easier this all would have been if Fia could interpret for him.

  “There’s someone I think you might get on with quite well,” he said as he turned the key in the lock. “But then again, as I recall, you already know her.” The door fell open, and Alexander was hit with a damp smell. Either somebody hadn’t been here in a while, or it was completely uninhabitable.

  He found himself thinking back to the last time he was on Earth when he’d gone looking for Fia at Noor’s request. Kit had made an appearance a few times, only Alexander hadn’t really known him all that well back then. As well as anyone can know a fox. Kit brushed by his legs and ran ahead inside.

  Alexander’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Stacks of books, floor to ceiling, filled one side of the narrow hallway. His wings scraped against the wall behind him as he squeezed his way through. Kit was waiting in an office of sorts, bookcases lined the room, each one overflowing with books. Books were everywhere—on the windowsill, tucked into gaps between other books, on the tops of bookcases, on every surface.

  In front of the window—a window that looked out onto a brick wall—sat a chair and a desk, overflowing with open books. Kit jumped up onto the desk, waiting.

  “Is this all Hazel’s?” Alexander asked. Not that he expected Kit to reply. He seemed to do things of his own accord, even for Hazel. But Hazel had mentioned she was looking into something, was this it?

  Alexander sat down and looked at everything scattered across the desk in front of him, absentmindedly toying with Fia’s hair elastic he still wore around his wrist. A large book with brown pages lay in the centre of the mess, its pages old and faded. An ink drawing of a tree stretched across both open pages.

  “Yggdrasil,” Alexander read out loud. He lifted the book closer, inspecting the faded drawing. The tree’s roots took up every spare inch of the page, swirling around it and overlapping in every direction, small bubbles here and there sitting above the roots. Was it the great tree from the cemetery? The one that had gone up in flames along with the angels and the crone?

  Alexander flipped the book shut to look at the cover. It was a symbol, it looked like a rune. He pulled another book towards him—another diagram of the tree. Every book scattered across the desk was about Yggdrasil in one way or another.

  Kit sat quietly, blinking at Alexander as he watched.

  “The tree of life,” Alexander read. In every drawing, the roots spread wide across the pages, larger even than the tree itself. A piece of paper with handwriting scribbled across it was buried underneath a pile of books. Alexander pulled it out carefully.

  “Aldwych station,” Alexander said. STRAND was underlined several times. Tunnels. Roots. It was all random words and thoughts that Hazel had scribbled down as she’d been reading.

  Strand. He’d seen that word somewhere in London, above a disused station. “Kit, help me out here. Where is this?” he said, waving the piece of paper in Kit’s direction.

  Kit made a little whining sound and bobbed his head. He trotted off the desk and leapt onto the back of Alexander’s chair, onto the floor and then up onto a chest of drawers on the opposite side of the room. Beside him, on the wall, hung an old picture with coloured lines.

  Alexander moved across the room to get a better look. It had a red border and a tattered, worn background. At the top it read “Underground” and coloured dots and lines ran across the picture in different directions. He recognised the layout of the river and realised it was a map of the routes the vehicles took beneath the city. He’d been down into the tunnels a few times, once for a particularly unpleasant death of a young man who’d thrown himself in front of one of the trains. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t gone with Alexander, and instead, the young man’s spirit had wandered off down the tunnels into the darkness.

  Alexander scanned the picture for the words Strand or Aldwych. There. Both a dot, each close to a bend in the river Alexander recognised. “Thank you, Kit,” he muttered, and hurried out of the room, down the narrow corridor past the piles of books, out through the door and into the small garden beside the church. He looked up once at the sky before pushing off into the air, flying up to the roof of the church to get his bearings. There, as he spun around—the river.

  He set off towards the water, flying high to get a good view of the bends and turns of the river below him until he could see the section from the map he was looking for. “Strand,” he murmured to himself, flying down near the bend in the river, hovering just in line with the roofs of the buildings. A red-bricked façade caught his eye, with an arch of windows above a red door and a metal railing. STRAND STATION in heavy black letters on a white background sat above the doorway. Alexander felt a flutter of anticipation as he thought about his friends, pushing aside his worries that he might already be too late. He had to try.

  He set down beside the metal gate and gave it a subtle tug as people walked by. “It’s open,” he breathed. He looked across the street. A woman sat outside a coffee shop, staring at her phone. A few vehicles drove by, but his side of the street had fallen quiet. With one last check, Alexander slid the gate open just enough for him to squeeze through and shut it swiftly behind him.

  He made his way down winding steps, nothing but tiled walls and old, flaking posters surrounding him. Around and down the steps went, until he eventually stepped out onto an empty platform. They all looked the same, the other stations he’d been to, only this one was crumbling and decaying around him.

  Alexander jumped down onto the rails and a few mice scattered as he landed. Which direction? He peered into the darkness beyond him, but it was silent, the air cool and still. Not like the warm breezes he’d felt in the other stations he’d been to before.

  If he walked in the wrong direction and got lost, how much time would he waste? Would it be too late for his friends? He looked to his left and closed his eyes, listening. Nothing. The air was stale—not cool like in the other direction, but almost like the tunnel beyond held nothing inside it. Alexander set off into the darkness, walking between the rails so he wouldn’t stumble. Mice and other things scattered as he walked, but no other sounds filled the shadows.

  The stale air turned pungent like a decaying animal lay somewhere nearby, and
Alexander’s foot brushed against something hard. He crouched down in the darkness and ran his fingers over the rough surface. A tree root.

  He stood up and traced the root with his foot, but it disappeared back into the ground. “Yggdrasil,” he whispered. Alexander walked on through the darkness, his feet touching against tree roots every now and then until the air changed and the staleness dissipated. His skin felt cool, and Alexander paused on a thick piece of tree root to listen in the darkness. It was the familiar hum of a window. He reached out a hand and waved it across the air before him, watching as it disappeared and then reappeared. He looked behind him out of instinct but saw only darkness. This has to be it. He ran his foot along the tree root, and sure enough, it ran right through the window. He could bring help from Ohinyan, he could gather an army of angels to help rescue the ones trapped here. He wouldn’t let them die.

  Alexander stepped through the window and the air changed immediately. The unmistakable scent of water and rock hit him as if he were in a cave. He looked around, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. Wet walls arched up high around him, and a stone pathway stretched on ahead. He couldn’t see a ceiling—he couldn’t see a light source, not yet. But he could hear water and had no doubt it would be somewhere in the darkness below. His foot brushed against the tree root, and he looked down to see the pathway cracked and split with roots from every direction. What is this place?

  He walked on, peering over the edge of the path to see what was below—but it was too dark. Across from him in the stone, a dim blue light was embedded into the rock, casting out just enough light for him to see an archway at the end of the path.

  Something splashed behind him just as he made it to the archway, and Alexander spun around, a sword drawn and ready. “Who’s there?” he called out. Back towards the tunnel—the tunnel on Earth, for a moment he thought he saw a flash of blonde hair. A spirit, maybe? But there was no shimmer of blue, no ethereal light. “Hello?” There—again, a girl on the Earth side of the window, just for a second, and then she was gone.

  Alexander waited, but no one approached, no one stepped through from Earth. It must have been a spirit. He turned back to the archway and walked through a small tunnel, small enough that his wings brushed against damp stone. Blue light lit up the opening, and almost as abruptly as it began, the tunnel ended, and Alexander stepped out.

  His breath caught in his throat. Great stone pillars rose up on either side of him, tree roots wrapped around them and stretched out in every direction. He followed the pillars, up, up, up—to a ceiling of stars. How is this possible? More of those blue lights were stuck to the pillars, and Alexander could see tree roots everywhere, and unmistakeably, up ahead, the shadow of a great tree, reaching up towards the stars and illuminated in a soft blue glow. Yggdrasil.

  With his sword still drawn, Alexander stepped tentatively towards the tree, his gaze moving from the stone pillars to the canopy of stars, to more of the blue lights flickering in the distance. Tiny flecks of soft white light floated around him and for a moment he thought they might be insects, but they were too bright for him to tell. He didn’t know if he was inside, or outside, but no breeze rustled his feathers as he walked.

  The tree stretched up before him, taller than any of the buildings in London, its roots as wide as the biggest trees Alexander had ever seen. The roots didn’t just run out and down though, they reached up and around the tree, too. Up and up they stretched, wrapping around and over each other and stretching out in all directions and up towards the canopy of stars and—there. Orbs floating amongst the stars. Bubbles, Alexander thought to himself. Like the drawings in Hazel’s books.

  Only, these weren’t bubbles. They were other worlds.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Erebus

  E rebus considered doubling back to check on Fia but didn’t want to raise any suspicion. He’d have to make sure to come back with arrows, too—and the thought of having to carry out such a menial task was too tiresome to waste time considering it. There was far too much to be achieved, and little time to achieve it.

  He flew south to the nearest window—there were so many across Ohinyan, many more than the angels realised. But Erebus had had time from his prison to watch and learn, and when this was all over, he intended to explore all the other worlds that overlapped with this one. He’d leave Ohinyan begging for his help, and Fia would help him to do just that.

  She had no idea just how powerful she was. Or just how much like Terah she was too. Terah breathed life into everything. And when she died… Erebus shook the thought away. Something inside him had broken, watching her life slip away from her. Something he knew he’d never get back.

  This is your doing, angels. He’d meant what he’d said to Alexander. The angels had made him this way, and they would suffer for it. For Terah’s death. For all of it. The witches too—they were next on his list for spreading their disgusting lies. Pathetic. All of them.

  Erebus heard the subtle hum of the window as he approached. Once he was through, ocean stretched beneath him in every direction. Earth was much bigger than Ohinyan, and the vastness of the oceans was undeniably spectacular—little else on Earth interested him other than the scenery.

  He thought of his father as he flew towards the island that was home to London. Ahriman rarely took the form of anything, but once he’d taken an angel’s image when Erebus was a boy and could not be consoled. Just once, but it was enough for Erebus to remember him by. It was how he always pictured his father, wings as dark as night and eyes as endless as the universe.

  The familiar skyline of London soon came into view, and Erebus flew above roads lined with vehicles and people. The air was thick with pollution—he detested it. How they could stand it, the people of Earth, he didn’t know.

  It was laughable that Lorn thought she was the fire mother—but then the prophecy about Fia had been twisted and misshapen so many times over the years, it was really no surprise. But it was imperative Fia learnt to harness her powers by the time the sun died. All of Ohinyan would be in her debt, and in turn, his.

  But first, Earth. He anticipated the army would be ready for his return, and he was looking forward to unleashing the spirits onto Earth as Alexander and the other angels watched. That the spirits would torment the people of Earth was an added bonus—it was stripping the angels of their ancient duty that was his true prize.

  Erebus touched down onto cobblestones, and two witches stood guard either side of an old door. “Well, aren’t you going to grant me access?”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong building, mate,” the first one replied.

  “Aidan, that’s him. The Big E,” the second one said.

  “Shut up, Eddie. She told us not to let anyone in. You think I’m going to let an angel waltz ri—”

  Erebus rolled his eyes and flung open the door with just the tiniest wisp of his powers. Tendrils of darkness snaked around him as he made his way down to where his army was waiting, Aidan and Eddie bickering behind him. Lorn’s voice carried up through the corridor, and it didn’t pass him by that not a single witch stood guard within the interior of the building. Amateurs.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we were just being precautious. Didn’t realise it was you.”

  Erebus paused and turned to look at the witch that had followed him. Aidan. Erebus loathed him immediately. His dark hair was slicked back, his skin pocked and rough. One of his front teeth was gold—a vile demonstration of wealth that, as far as Erebus had witnessed, meant the owner usually had barely even a coin to their name.

  “Stand guard here, alert me to anyone’s presence. Understood?” Erebus demanded. He didn’t wait for a response and burst into the room that housed his spirit army.

  Lorn was delivering orders. “You will visit every home, every person sleeping on a bench or in a doorway, anyone taking a nap in the afternoon sun, and you will haunt them. You will create as much misery as possible. You will—”

  Erebus clapped. The sound echoed th
rough the room, and the blank faces of the spirit army stared back at him. There weren’t nearly as many of them as he’d hoped for, even if a second floor was filled with them as he suspected. It would take time to build up to the numbers he desired. “A noble effort, Lorn, truly. But they need motivation—a little drive.” He released the darkness that swirled around his arms, and encircled the nearest cluster of spirits, encasing them entirely in darkness. He let go of his physical form and floated to the top of the room, stretching his shadows across the spirits below. “Understand this,” he bellowed, in a voice that was his but wasn’t—the voice he’d had from within his prison, ancient and powerful. “If you do not do what is asked of you, you will cease to exist. There will be no other, no existing on Earth in your current form. You will be nothing. Not even an atom of you will remain.” His darkness crushed the cluster of spirits he was holding, and in an instant, they disappeared into nothingness. They were simply gone.

  Erebus was not oblivious to the way Lorn recoiled the moment the spirits disappeared. So much for the great fire mother. He fell back into his physical form—he relished the sensation of it, after so long without a body. “Do you understand what is required of you?” He looked down at the army below, Lorn bristling at his side.

  “Yes,” the spirits replied in unison.

  Erebus clapped his hands. “Very well. Lorn, bring Alexander and the others.”

  “About that, sire.” Lorn took a step back but held her head high, defiant.

  I should have known better than to leave. “Well?”

  “He escaped. But we have hi—”

  Erebus didn’t hear anything else. He was ethereal at once, nothing more than a swarm of black smoke passing through the spirit army, down through the floorboards and into the basement where he’d left Alexander pinned to the beams.

  But Alexander wasn’t there. Lorn burst into the room, but Erebus didn’t turn his attention to her. Not yet, he’d deal with her later. The angels beneath him cried out as Erebus sent his powers out into every corner of the room, knocking and scraping anyone he touched. Angels, witches, human. Human. What was a human doing there? He dropped down into his physical form, face to face with a golden-eyed angel who stood beside the human. He circled the angel. Halvar, the angel that had been brought in with Alexander. The general’s son. He stood defensively in front of the human, who looked more than capable of defending herself.