“It’s not the madness,” she said. “This—this change, it happened by itself. When we were…” She looked down at where they’d lain, then back at Philos, utterly bewildered. “I don’t understand. I’ve changed, without the volcano’s blood, without the ritual. It doesn’t happen like that. It’s not my own gift, not like the others, I can’t just—”
Philos spoke across her, and when she looked at him he was frowning, intent. “What does it feel like?”
“What?”
“This—when the change happens. Do you feel it? You said once, you heard a sound like chimes.”
“I… Yes. But that was the madness.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
“What?”
“I heard it too, picked it up. In the ravine, the first time—”
“Yes. I said, it’s the madness—”
“But the next time, it was when we made love. I felt it then, the same thing. That time, Maya, did anything happen? Anything like this, like the change?”
It came back to her, that half-drowned memory. The feeling of something sweeping through her, the ghosts of sensations she’d only felt in the temple. Then afterwards, when she’d thought she’d felt her nails grow and sharpen…
“It did,” she said. “It happened then. This is the second time.”
And understanding began to dawn.
“It is my own gift.” The words echoed strangely in her ears, words she’d never thought she’d say. Words she still could not quite believe. “My gift. My own gift. Then the volcano’s blood, the ritual…” she spoke slowly, reasoning it out, “…all that did was control when it happened. The blood—it’s not the key. It never was. All it does is…”
She glanced at Philos. “You called it a drug once.”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“I think you were right.” She stared down at the altered shape of her hands as the shape of her thoughts altered too, moving from confusion to certainty. “What it did—all it did—was make us…oh, something like drunk, take us out of ourselves enough for the power to be released.”
“But when you’re set free from their control…”
“Then we’re free to discover our own ways of finding the power. The volcano’s blood, it suppressed everything, every normal emotion—joy and pain and grief…”
“So that…” Philos hesitated, reasoning it out as she had done, “…that’s why they tried the girls out so young, before it began naturally, like the other gifts do, before they could discover it for themselves?”
“Yes. Yes. For us, for the maenads, I remember—we never felt normal desires. Everything got turned into just one. We never had a chance to feel…” she paused, trying to find the right word, “…euphoria. We never got a chance to feel anything aside from what they wanted us to feel. And now, this, with you… It’s given me my power, but without the madness. It’s—” she couldn’t stay still; she got to her feet, happiness like a wave breaking over her, like foam fizzing on her skin, “—it’s just me. This is me.”
The full realisation tipped her into the last of the change, lengthening her claws, sharpening her teeth. She felt it within her as it happened, felt her blood and bones and muscles alter, felt it as something she was doing, rather than something that was done to her, out of her control. She didn’t yet know how she’d make it happen again, but she would learn. She was Maya, leader of the maenad pack, learning for the first time that the power she’d longed for had been hers, always hers. She would practice, she would learn, and it would be hers forever.
She looked at Philos as he got to his feet to face her, the glow of triumph flooding through her. “Look! This is my power now. I’m the one who’s going to choose when to use it, when to change, when to fight. The priests stole it like they stole the temple, like they stole Aera’s right to rule. We’ve taken them back, we’ve taken them all back.”
Her gaze fell on the abandoned bottle of volcano’s blood. She stooped and picked it up. In her hand it felt light, insignificant, as if it could never have had so much power over her. She held it a moment, the substance that had controlled half her life, the substance she’d almost chosen over the man she loved, wondering if she should feel anything—anger, revulsion?
She didn’t. She only felt light, as light as the bottle in her hand, scoured through and clean.
She drew her arm back and threw the bottle. It sailed up against the rising sun, a black blot against the light, then fell to bounce—once, twice, three times—down the side of the volcano. On the third bounce it burst. Maya saw the dark patch of volcano’s blood it left on the rocks, a mark that would wear away under the sand-harsh wind, wear away and be gone.
She looked at Philos and found him watching her.
“And you—Maya, you’re not helpless anymore.” There was triumph in his face, but tenderness too, so much that her heart turned over. She went to him and his arms came round her, his face against her hair.
Maya came to him, moving like a scavenger bird, a bone-thin dragon-thing, a shape of terror that had filled his nightmares for years. But she was no longer terrifying. Her scent drifted up to him as he put his arms around her, and her hair lay soft under his cheek.
He’d cursed his gift before, hated the empathy that blurred his thoughts and confused his motives. But if he’d never made that near-fatal mistake he would not be standing here now, with the temple under his people’s control and the woman he loved in his arms.
He would not curse his gift again. He’d been careless, and it had given him everything he’d ever wanted.
About the Author
When Imogen Howson was a child, she loved reading so much she not only read in bed, at the table and in the bath, but in the shower and—not so successfully—on her bicycle. She enjoyed books in a slightly unorthodox way, too—many of her childhood books still have ragged edges where she tore paper from the margins in order to eat it.
When Imogen and her younger sister became bored on family outings, Imogen entertained them both with stories about fairies or, in defiance of biology, “the people inside your body” who made everything work.
Imogen’s favorite stories are still those that ignore biology, reality and the known laws of nature. She writes romantic fantasy and science fiction, and makes liberal use of the substance known as handwavium.
Imogen lives near Sherwood Forest in England, with her partner and their two daughters. She still reads in most places, but nowadays she prefers Cheddar cheese and endless cups of coffee to paper.
Imogen can be found at her website—www.imogenhowson.com, blog—www.imogenhowson.com/blog, Facebook and Twitter. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at [email protected].
Look for these titles by Imogen Howson
Now Available:
Heart of the Volcano
Caught between love and duty, can she make an impossible choice?
Heart of the Volcano
© 2009 Imogen Howson
Five years ago, Aera was called away from everything she had ever known: her home, family, and Coram, the boy she was growing to love. She was given no choice. As the only living lava-shifter—able to transform her body into molten rock—she is destined to serve the volcano god as his fire priestess. Now, before she takes her ordained role, she must face her final test. Execute a criminal sentenced to death for the most unforgivable of all sins. Blasphemy.
She’s shocked to discover it’s no anonymous law-breaker waiting chained at the center of the labyrinth. It’s Coram. For the crime of being a gargoyle, a winged stone-shifter. A gift akin to hers…except his gift is unsanctioned by the temple, his powers proclaimed unholy.
If she refuses the test she will betray her god and condemn her family to dishonor. To pass it she must kill the boy she used to love…the man she still does.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Heart of the Volcano:
“You want to know what it is?” said Coram. “Will it make it easier to know? Easier to kill me,
when you see the abomination I’m hiding?”
“No.” Nothing will make it easier to kill you. But she couldn’t say that aloud, standing here as they were, priestess and victim.
He shrugged. The chains swung down as his arms fell against his body. “Very well. Watch, fire-priestess, servant of the volcano-god, standing with all your power in your very own labyrinth. See the path laid before me.”
And he changed.
She was looking into his eyes, and change came there first: a swirl of grey spiraling out from his pupils, swallowing up the colour, spreading to transform the whole of both his eyes into the lifeless stare of a statue.
Then it poured over the rest of him like water soaking through fabric, a tide of grey washing from his face down over his neck and chest and arms, hardening every angle of bone and curve of muscle until they looked like contours on a cliff face. He’d been big at fifteen, and bigger still now he was grown up, but as the stony colour seeped over his skin, his chest and arms grew visibly even larger, muscles bulging under the folds of his toga-tunic.
He moved, just a little, and it made a horrible grating noise, stone on stone. His head went down, his shoulders tensed, then wings unfolded, huge, stone-feathered wings, arching above their heads like a temple roof.
When he spoke even his voice sounded different, hollow, echoing, like the wind blowing through empty caves. “Blasphemy or not, then, priestess? Do you believe it now?”
Of course it was blasphemy. Terrible blasphemy, the worst kind, the kind that was a travesty of her own gift. Turning, not to fire that came from the god, that purified and destroyed sin, but to something less than human, even less than animal. She’d not seen or heard of it before—what is he? Does the gift even have a name?—but she knew all the holy gifts, the fire gifts, and this was none of them. Yet, all the same…
It’s like my gift. Living stone. Like me. And he’s—oh, I cannot say it to him, but he’s beautiful.
The words swelled inside her, hurting her chest, making her breath catch. She’d never imagined anything like the way he looked, never imagined that stone, her own substance, the thing she thought she knew so well, could look like this, all smooth grey planes, every line of his body somehow more defined than it had been in flesh.
Helpless to stop or control it, she heard her voice go back to a whisper. “What are you? A—a stone-shifter, a—”
“Gargoyle.” He spread his arms a little, looked down at himself. “Or so they said when they came for me. Stone-shifters don’t have wings. So they said.” Contempt and anger flashed through his voice.
Gargoyle. An ugly-sounding word. She had heard it before, she realized now, but hadn’t known exactly what it was, and had taken little notice. No one expected her to know the many horrible permutations of the unholy gifts. It was not her task to find them or identify them, only to destroy—
She stuck on that last thought, her mind stuttering over the word. Destroy. Coram had never asked for this, would never have deliberately gone against the god’s will. And he…this thing he was—it wasn’t horrible. But all the same, she must—
She couldn’t think it, not yet. In a minute she would face the thought, the reality of what she must do. Not yet. Not yet.
Above her, his wings bent, drew downwards to fold onto his back. The stony rustle grated on her ears and echoed around the walls of the labyrinth eye. The grey colour receded from his skin, and his body changed, shrinking, redefining its shape. He stood wholly human before her.
“You can stop staring now.”
She looked away, embarrassed. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for staring? Or sorry you’re going to kill me?”
The words stung. She flinched, not looking at him. “For staring…”
“Oh, don’t worry.” His voice was as hard as if it still came from the stone lips. “I know very well how appalling I am—an abomination to gods and men. I hardly expect you not to be revolted.”
I’m not revolted. She swallowed. I’m not revolted, and I should be. Even if I’ve not seen an unholy gift before, I’ve been a priestess for five years, I’m one with the god’s power, I’m supposed to be one with his mind. I should see this as the abomination it is.
“Go on.”
She jerked her head up to look at him. “What?”
“Go on. You’ve seen the justification. Do what you came here for.”
“You mean…”
“Kill me. Do what your god tells you. Fulfill your destiny.”
Love, science, death. She is all three.
Bluebeard’s Machine
© 2010 Mari Fee
A Silk, Steel and Steam Story
Determined to discover what new experiment is stealing her husband’s attentions, Annette Parker ventures into forbidden territory—his study—only to discover a secret he would kill to keep. She is his fifth attempt to clone the original Annette and, according to his journal, he’s planning a sixth…after he dissects her dead body.
Unsure of who or what she is, she assumes a new identity and flees to the Orkney Islands and her last hope. The man she once rejected.
Isaac Ward’s first instinct is to get this mysterious “Miss Ada” out of his undersea laboratory—and out of his life—before he repeats the mistakes that drove him there in the first place. Her wild stories and stubborn insistence that they’re true wear his patience thin, but it doesn’t matter. She is as irresistible as the tide.
Then the truth appears right outside the portholes of his lab, stripping away her dubious disguise. Exposing a secret that could kill them both…unless Isaac abandons the science he knows for a second chance with the woman who broke his heart.
Warning: contains mad scientists, wanton murder, identity crises, and boiling hot underwater sex. Submersible instructions not included.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Bluebeard’s Machine:
The top of the column was pushed open by a large male hand, followed by a white shirtsleeve stained with ink, and then by the head and shoulders of Isaac Ward himself. The naturalist’s long face was clean-shaven, and he had fiercely intelligent green eyes beneath a tangle of brown hair badly in need of a trim, or at least a bit of grease. The beginnings of crow’s feet radiated from the corners of his eyes, which grew wide when he spotted Ada.
“Mr. Ward?” Ada’s cheeks grew warm as he stared. Dragging her gaze from his was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but looking at the sea was so much easier than looking at Mr. Ward. He wore his years well. Too well.
She cleared her throat and started again. “Mr. Ward, I hate to intrude, but I’m Miss Ada Powell. I…”
“Miss Powell?” The sound of his voice doubled the butterflies in her stomach. “Have we met?”
“Only briefly. Many years ago.” She forced a smile. “I, uh… I have a request, but this isn’t the best place to discuss it.”
“A request.” When she glanced at him, he was staring at her intently enough to make her squirm. “I don’t often receive visitors, Miss Powell.”
“I hoped you would make an exception for me.” Ada resisted the urge to look away as he studied her. This was not the man she remembered. Time had ground the softness from him, and perhaps running to him for help wasn’t as good of an idea as she’d first thought. He was a man of science, after all. Like her husband.
“Fine. You and Mr…?” Ward pointed at the Whitemaa’s captain.
“I hired Mr. Marwick to bring me here. He will return when I send for him. You do have a way to contact the—surface?”
“I have a telegraph.” Ward ascended the rest of the way up the ladder inside the column and stepped onto the platform next to Ada. Her heart thumped painfully at his nearness, and she stepped back without thinking about it. He grabbed her elbow to steady her as her heels hit the edge of the platform. “Careful—you almost walked into the sea.”
“Thank you.” Ada put a hand to her throat and took a deep, calming breath as the ocean lapped at her feet. His
hand radiated heat through the sleeve of her tweed jacket, and he waited another heartbeat before releasing her. He was taller than she remembered, and smelled faintly of brine and Indian tobacco.
“Perhaps you and I ought to talk aboard Mr. Marwick’s fine salvage vessel. I’m sure it will be much more comfortable for a lady. My observatory is quite cramped—”
Ada shook her head. “I wish to speak with you privately, Mr. Ward. If you fit down that hole, I am quite sure I will as well.”
“I’m not sure I agree. Climbing a ladder in skirts—”
Picking up her carpetbag, Ada thrust it at Ward. “I am perfectly able to climb down a ladder as long as my hands are free. Mr. Marwick, I will have Mr. Ward send for you when I wish to leave. Thank you for your services thus far.”
“Any day, Miss.” Marwick tipped his hat to her even as he rolled his eyes at Ward, who growled something inaudible in return. The masculine exchange clearly said women! and it raised Ada’s hackles, then depressed her. If they only knew the truth of it, she thought dismally, then hiked her tweed skirt over her knees, sat on the edge of the ladder column and swung her legs into the hole. A ladder was welded onto the side of the round column, and the air coming up the shaft smelled of tobacco and salt.
Ada looked at Ward, who sighed and stuck her carpetbag beneath his arm. “We still have time to go to the ship.”
“Good day, Mr. Marwick.” Ada gathered her skirts in one hand and threw the majority of the fabric over her arm, then slowly descended beneath the waves. Her shoes rang against the metal rungs of the ladder as the light filtering through the portholes in the column walls became dimmer and dyed blue-grey the deeper she went.
Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano Page 24
