Forged in Blood and Lightning: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Descendants of Thor Trilogy: Book One)

by S. A. Ashdown

  I’d encountered scarier things and suffered agonies far beyond what I’d ever read about. Magic meant play, once upon a time. Father hid the serious side from me to allow me a childhood free of worry. And let me inhabit this cage of my own making.

  Raphael, how did he do it? How did he flitter in and out of our lives, no menace in his elfin form, leaving less imprint than a fluffy cloud? Yet I was sure he had stolen the amulet. And it wasn’t the first time. On a hunch, I rifled through my sock draw, hunting for the key. It had gone too, although it was possible my father had taken it. Fire ants of fury bit under the surface of my skin. How dare he take what’s mine whenever he feels like it. I’m sick of him making decisions for me. While I lived in Hellingstead Hall, I would have no privacy. Bolts and locks meant nothing to him.

  I slammed the drawer shut and spun round. On the dressing table, the thief had left his calling card; a linen square folded into the crisp shape of a turtledove, the wingtip brushing against the mirror as if inviting a dance with its reflection.

  I swept over the floorboards and gathered it up in my hands. It fell open, parchment within covered in inky swirls. Raphael had passed his message to me, one of quiet resolution but also peace. He was giving me this chance. Had he given a clue to Father when he’d taken the amulet from him?

  ‘In the seed of Jupiter’s Acorn, life holds balance, let the pendulum swing, let the ancient fruit rot or bloom’. I whispered the riddle with the reverence of a priest taking his vows, something I reserved for swearing oaths upon the golden ring in the temple. Raphael had handled this thing, had imbued it with a lasting trace of himself, his loopy handwriting reminiscent of a medieval manuscript, invoking a sense of piety in its author. I held a sacred text, a rare, tangible proof of Raphael’s existence.

  I should tell them about this.

  I crept to the door.

  ‘What would you have me do, Espen? Let the boy die of brain cancer?’

  ‘You were gone for days. Days! How long does a dip in the spring take?’

  ‘He needed to recover from the shock. Stop blaming me.’

  I couldn’t take anymore. They weren’t even arguing about Father hitting me. Why should I offer this clue to them, just so they could close me out again when they deciphered it? Raphael meant this for me alone, the turtledove his unambiguous peace offering.

  No, the amulet belonged to me. I would find it. I would drag the family’s lies and half-truths into the harsh heat of the blazing sun, and they would unveil their true faces before turning to ash under its rays, as vampires are supposed to do. Secrets are worse than vampires, sucking everybody dry, catching friend and foe alike in the webs of deceit. Secrets are spiders ensnaring victims, fastening them in sticky strands, in tight, silvery corners. Secrets are Black Widows.

  I didn’t want to be a prisoner in a Clemensen web. I didn’t want to be a thread in Hecate’s netted dress. Was it too much to ask to find Ava and lie with her under the stars, to think of nothing but the cold air on a clear night, the tingling of her hair against my cheek, the wet warmth of her lips grazing mine? Why couldn’t I be free to love her?

  I will find her. I will have her. Damn Menelaus and his plans.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway struck ten pm. It’s time to make good on my agreement with Lorenzo. I changed into jeans and a red sweater my grandmother had sent me from Norway, adding my cloak for good measure, tucking Raphael’s note in the little pocket sewn in the lining. I combed my rat-nest hair, tugging at the tangles while staring at my right cheek in the mirror, the one Father had struck. No bruise would form; I’d healed instantly. The damage was inside.

  I’d been trying to escape attending my mother’s funeral the last time I climbed the trellis beneath the bedroom window. I couldn’t cope when Father’s face had poked around the door, and I panicked like a flapping bird and rushed from him. I’d gotten as far as the ash tree before Uncle Nikolaj tackled me to the ground. Needless to say, he had talked me out of running away, and I went with them, a little boy clutched between two men, the only thing preventing them from falling apart.

  I headed for the ash tree again, this time without the chase, scrambling up the rough branches so I could see the half-crumbled tower of St. Michael’s Church. Holding my hair out of my face, I strained to spot the flame fighting the wind, hurling its message to me. Lorenzo is okay. Or at least, Malachi hadn’t killed him yet.

  I smiled for the first time since coming home. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to describe the look on Penny’s face when he came striding in clad in hides and furs, and the bow and arrow Sayen had given him as a gift – yes, he’d been given a necklace too, the cord made from Naira’s hair – their way of saying no hard feelings you’re technically an evil Elf. I focused on the candle in the tower, shedding my earthly skin and re-inhabiting it outside the Old Vicarage.

  As much as I wanted to talk to Lorenzo, I came for the coven too. We had unfinished business, and by harassing my father, they had proven they would keep taking risks until they got what they desired. How much magic had they already syphoned from me, the Gatekeeper? My veins acted as the riverbank for the Lífkelda, and the coven’s streghe ancestors had worked out how to draw on that magic in their own rituals. Jörð, I dreaded to think what Penny would do if she united with me and gained access to my powers.

  Lorenzo beat me to the door; I didn’t even knock. His grin was full of mischief as he invited me in, naked but for his black jeans and Sarrow necklace. He fondled the beautiful Elf-bow, the arrows cleaving to his back in a quiver. At least someone’s happy, I thought.

  40

  A Familiar Face

  ‘How’d you swing it?’

  ‘Told them I saved your sorry arse so you could join the coven.’

  I groaned. ‘Yeah, thanks. Because I could do with the extra responsibility.’

  Lorenzo shot me a hard look. ‘I explained to Malachi how Espen’s wards cloaked me while I stayed at your house. And Nikolaj gave me this bow and necklace as thanks for helping you.’

  ‘But—’ I said, like a man with the brain of a snail. Lorenzo’s foot crunched down on mine and I clamped my mouth shut. Malachi’s probably eavesdropping. ‘But really you deserve something better than a bow,’ I added with a wink. ‘You acted quickly when it mattered.’ And you flung yourself through a portal to keep an eye on me.

  ‘How about a homecoming?’ Penny said, arriving from the kitchen, holding a glass of red wine, Strix’s claws digging into her shoulder. Her halter-neck didn’t offer much protection but apparently she had a shell of steel.

  ‘I didn’t go anywhere,’ I lied.

  Boy, could that girl drip menace. One sharp-angled eyebrow, feathered black, sloped up her high forehead. ‘You weren’t here,’ she said, rapping her knuckles on the floral wallpaper, a design feature so at odds with her bleak personality, ‘you ran from us like a squealing pig. Now I hope you’ve seen sense and returned to your true family.’

  I nodded vaguely. Jörð, was I cowed by this woman? Yes, because she’s a paler incarnation of the Black Widow. And I’m her prey. ‘I’m considering my options.’

  ‘Fantastico! Then we have two reasons for a fiesta. Lorenzo and Theo are alive and…’ she flickered over my healed skin, ‘unscathed.’

  Lorenzo blanched. ‘You care that I exist? Since when?’

  ‘I have my uses for you, Lorenzo De Laurentis.’ She eyed his necklace; the claim it made – the clan it aligned him with – didn’t bring her any pleasure. ‘You’re still ignorant of them.’

  I pitied us both for being trapped in Penny’s infernal scheming. ‘Great,’ I said, mainly because going home seemed like the worst idea in the history of eternity. And getting plastered was exactly what I needed to forget that my mum and brother had died, possibly murdered by Lorenzo’s professor, the girl I loved had literally forgotten I exist, and Raphael had stolen the one thing protecting the Gatekeeper – aka my ‘sorry arse’ – from death by torture or whatever else. I had
two weeks to prepare for a trial, and oh yeah, my father, beacon of parental love that he was, had decked me. ‘What are we drinking?’

  Beetles. That’s what they reminded me of – beetles. Penny offered me a seat on an antique sofa, designed for Victorian ladies forced upright by tight-laced corsets. The wood-burner blazed, throwing an amber glow into the shadows. I downed my wine, not tasting it, determined to get drunk just because Father forbade me to drink except during ritual blots. Jörð, I’m spiting him and he isn’t even here, how petty is that?

  The shadows started to migrate, flickering shapes bisecting from the walls and slithering into view, morphing into people in mid-air, creeping around the sofa so I was trapped within their haphazard circle. ‘That’s some spell,’ I said, staring at the thirteen witches and warlocks that made up the coven, their eyes blazing with the firelight.

  ‘Why you leave us?’ I recognised Arabella, who sprang onto the sofa with me, as scantily dressed as the night I’d danced with her.

  ‘I wasn’t interested in a shotgun union with Penny. If I join the coven it has to be on my terms.’

  If? What am I talking about?

  ‘We respect that,’ Arabella said, her French manicure pinching my forearm.

  I pleaded silently with Lorenzo to rescue me, but he sat across the room, twanging his bowstring with endless fascination, a sardonic smile chasing the shaded contours of his face. The smile died at Malachi’s entrance.

  The night took off quickly after that. Penny instructed Maria and Lori to go out for supplies, but it was already late. Feeling the effects of the wine, I dazzled them with a display of my abilities, and conjured a bountiful array of food – crisps and nuts, cheese, crackers, towers of tiramisu, party-snacks galore, straining the side tables and kitchen counter with the weight of it all – not to mention the alcohol.

  Malachi complained at the lack of vampire-friendly food. Lorenzo, starving from his abstinence in Alfheim, started dialling numbers, having amassed quite a collection of Enthralled victims – his bedroom purr, even over the phone, ensured compliance.

  Soon the knocker on the front door started to hammer every few minutes. By then I’d drained a bottle of Rioja and started on a dusty bottle of mead I’d found in the drinks cabinet, decanting it into a flagon before pouring the smooth, golden honey in tumblers. The two creepy servants turned up and handed it out.

  This is not okay. These people are not okay. These servants are their slaves. I dampened my conscience with each gulp. I’m a normal guy hanging out with normal young men and women having a normal time. Who decides who’s varmint or not anyway?

  Unlike the first party at the Old Vicarage, this time I knew what they wanted from me. I just didn’t care. Why not lead their coven? They were fun, unlike my father, much younger than my uncle, and most importantly, none of them shared a spec of Clemensen DNA with me.

  Lorenzo caught a scent downwind and bounded to the sitting room door in half-pirouettes, bowing across the open threshold like a ballerina. ‘My lady,’ he said, and the barmaid from the Red Hawk danced past him. ‘Alright, me’luv?’

  ‘Lorenzo,’ said Grace, her ginger hair scraped into loose pigtails. Lorenzo took advantage of his lowered position to admire the flesh between her knee-high boots and ruffled skirt. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I brought a friend along.’ Grace handed over a few pilfered bottles of scrumpy, branded with the Red Hawk logo, stepping out of the way as a woman walked in behind her, guitar slung over her back. ‘She said she’ll play for us.’

  It can’t be? Can it?

  I gripped the armrest, her arrival acting as a vice for my heart, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. Words abandoned me.

  It is. It must be. She’s here. My Ava.

  And she was staring straight at me.

  41

  Demolished By Desire

  My Ava, a mouse led into a trap by a stray alley-cat, one of Lorenzo’s pets.

  Malachi blocked the door behind her. He reached for her hair, fangs growing over his chin, licking his top lip. Ava stepped away, and I lost sight of her momentarily as Arabella and Lori danced in front of us, singing along with the Italian pop music they had blaring through the speakers. I pushed past them, unwilling to allow Malachi the chance to make good on his silent threat.

  I wanted to hug her as we’d hugged as children, so honest and devoted, to run my fingers through her rainbow waves, and kiss her lashes. I groaned inside like a creaky ship, and I was a legless sailor, unsteady, fettered by inexperience. Love was a fairy tale, a wondrous event to anticipate, until that is, you are sieged by it. I am demolished, I thought. Demolished by desire.

  Entreating her with open palm, I took her hand, grazing her dimpled knuckles to my lips. She shivered under Malachi’s leering breath as his fingers caressed her back before mine could get there.

  You violate this one, you die.

  The thought slipped out, a magical dagger that sliced into Malachi’s mind. He winced and locked his honey-coloured eyes onto me. While he hesitated, I stroked Ava’s waist, sending a ripple of static down her back. Malachi, defiant, touched her again – and received an electric shock for his trouble. He wrenched away, a snarl building in his throat. The spell stitched into Ava’s skin; any other man who threatened her would receive the same.

  ‘Hello, Ava, please excuse the house-pest behind you, he’s far too drunk.’ I felt my Norwegian accent thickening with shyness. ‘You don’t remember me, but my name is—’

  ‘Theo Clemensen.’

  Lorenzo and Grace gaped at us, two strangers tangled in inexplicable fervour. Laughter jumbled lazily across the room as Arabella led an Italian folk dance, the Tarantella – alleged to cure the bite of a poisonous spider – for the third time that evening. The first time I’d asked Penny if it was a nod to Diana. I stopped short of asking her if it had anything to do with the Black Widow.

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ava said, and her voice quivered. I glanced at Lorenzo’s bow as if an Elvish arrow could be responsible for the throbbing air we shared, but no, it was our creation alone. ‘No, not really. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know. But your mother haunts my dreams.’

  ‘She won’t leave me alone.’

  Ava had me enraptured. I knelt by the side of Lorenzo’s bed while Ava perched on the black velvet duvet. When Lorenzo had offered us his room so Ava and I could talk in private, Penny had cracked her knuckles, her big teeth ready to gnash. The priestess didn’t want us alone together, but I wasn’t about to replace my father’s orders with hers.

  Ava hugged a cushion on her lap as she sank into the mattress. Jörð, how I envied that bloody cushion, the yielding springs under Ava’s rounded hips. ‘What are you? Are you a witch?’ I asked, despite my Gatekeeper instincts indicating her sensitive tendencies were purely sapien.

  ‘Wow, you’re direct,’ she laughed.

  ‘Sorry, I meant, how is it you communicate with my mother?’

  ‘Do you know what a clairvoyant is?’

  How amazing that in this woman’s world she needed to ask such questions, and that vast swathes of sapiens wouldn’t have the foggiest idea about the core of her identity. Hope glittered in her soft, coppery regard, a doleful, wary grimace contorting her sheer cheekbones, the tension bunching up her shoulders and neck. The one thing I had always possessed in abundance was understanding. My family were carbon copies of each other, clones of a kind designed to house the world’s magic.

  She walks through life alone with her gift, Theo, like us. The Gatekeeper spoke into my heart, ending its bout of silence.

  We are both blessed and cursed, I thought, hating how alone she must’ve felt in the years we’d been parted.

  Her nails squeezed the life out of her pillow and I realised I’d taken too long to reply.

  ‘Hellingstead Hall – where I live – has its own library, Ava. It has an encyclopaedia. I defaced it.’ I warmed her knee with my palm, and grinned.

  ‘I wasn’t exp
ecting you to say that.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to say it either.’ We regarded each other for a moment fraught with bemusement. ‘It’s not a regular encyclopaedia.’

  ‘Are you getting to a point?’

  I was stalling, pulling out words like rolled-up scrolls from random pigeon-holes in my head, trying to figure out how to tell her that I’d dog-eared the entry about clairvoyants, underlining the sentences in pencil, an act that, until my dip in the River Lethe, I hadn’t remembered doing. My younger self had been looking up her, before she had been erased inexplicably from my life.

  ‘I’ll show it to you and you’ll understand.’

  ‘If it’s in your library, how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘Unique methods of transportation are a gift of mine,’ I said. ‘It’ll be easier if I just show you.’ Resting my forehead on the bed, I visualised the book until I saw it crisp and sharp in my vision, a fragment of a dream made real. When I sat up, blue sparks split the space between us, and out of the chasm came the encyclopaedia. If that didn’t remind her of our past, I didn’t know what would. And she had known. The child Ava had known exactly what I was.

  The book fell open to the exact page. ‘I know what a clairvoyant is, Ava.’ Her attention flickered between me and the miraculous tome. ‘Because I’m a warlock.’

  42

  Ghost Boy

  Ava read ferociously, lips apart and trembling, as Theo perched next to her like a bodyguard, as if she’d absorb the feverish turmoil he was shedding from his aura like so many flakes of old skin. His curls melted into the colourful waves tumbling down her own back. She found herself sitting so straight, a posture she usually took when she was playing for an audience, picking the strings of her guitar, trying to exude confidence.