by Sarra Cannon
I broke free of its hold on me and shifted to get around Connery’s massive size. He took up half the width of the corridor in his wolf form.
I reformed at the head of the golem and buried my dagger in its heart.
The familiar river of glowing magic flowed out of its wound and seconds later, its entire form turned to dust.
I glanced up just as a bright green light exploded all around us.
I tensed, expecting some new enemy to appear, but instead, Azure stepped back, shaking her head.
“Sorry about that,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe put a little too much power into it.”
As the light began to dim, I opened my eyes wide as I realized what she’d managed to create.
Thick vines now covered the inside of the doorway. They writhed like snakes, looping and locking into one another to form a type of thick lattice structure that spanned the entire length of the stone wall.
“Wow,” I whispered. “When did you learn to do that?”
“Still learning, apparently,” she said. “It’s something my mother showed me once, but I didn’t actually start practicing it until recently. But trust me, no one’s getting through that door.”
“You know, we will have to get back out,” Silas said.
“I’ve got that covered, too,” she said. “Come on, let’s find Mary Kathryn.”
I turned and peered into the darkness. There were no torches lit inside this dungeon, but I could see pretty clearly in the dark, and there was no sign of the second Hollow.
“Where is he?” I asked Connery.
He lifted his nose twice, motioning toward the end of the hallway.
I shook my head. I could see the stone wall at the other end, but there was no sign of a Hollow. Was he actually inside the cell with her?
Damn. If he was in there with her, that meant he might be able to kill her before we had a chance to even get inside. I couldn’t let that happen.
I shifted to smoke and flew down the corridor, glancing left and right as I passed each of the cells, searching for Franki’s mom.
I realized my mistake too late. I’d gone too fast. Not looked closely enough.
As my demon form passed through the magical barrier, my body shifted back to human involuntarily as a loud pop echoed through the chamber.
“It’s a trap,” I shouted, but we were in too deep to get away now.
The illusion of an empty hallway dropped to reveal a single Hollow standing in front of the final cell. He held a long sword in one hand, the blade of it encased in an icy-blue glow. He wore no glasses at all. Instead, the same icy glow stared out at us from the darkness.
“Run,” a woman shouted.
Some part of my brain registered Franki’s mother gripping the steel bars of the cell just behind the Hollow, but I couldn’t seem to heed her warning fast enough.
The Hollow brought his sword down against the stone floor, and a blast of blue light swept forward towards us in a wide, sweeping circle.
I tried to shift, but my magic wouldn’t cooperate. There was some kind of barrier preventing it.
“Go,” I shouted to the others.
They hadn’t followed me through the trap, and I hoped that would save them.
The blast of light covered my body in thick ice that chilled me to my core, freezing me in an instant. I could still hear and see through the ice, but I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t draw on my power at all.
A flash of pink went off just a few feet away, and Azure stood in front of the other two as a shield against the Hollow’s blast. The ice coated her energy, creating a wall between them and the Hollow, but movement on the other side of that wall gave me hope.
Dammit. I shouldn’t have rushed down here, thinking that the Hollow was inside the cell. I should have stopped to think. We couldn’t afford mistakes like this. The clock was ticking against both Franki and myself, and we didn’t have the luxury of mistakes.
I closed my eyes and tried to connect to the core of my power. It was still there, but it was dimmed. Unreachable in my current state.
Silas shouted something I couldn’t make out, and when I opened my eyes, he stood at the edge of the barrier trap I’d triggered, holding a ball of pure blue flame in his hands. Water coated the floor at his feet, and his eyes glowed red as he hurled the flames toward the Hollow.
The flames smashed against some invisible wall of energy surrounding the Hollow, and Silas cursed, drawing a second spell into his hands.
“Throw the damn bomb,” he shouted.
Azure bent over, clutching her stomach. She’d used too much of her power too fast.
Connery acted instead, grabbing the glass bottle between his teeth and leaping across the barrier. The Hollow raised his sword again and swung at Connery in mid-air, but despite his giant size, he was nimble and fast.
He dodged the sword and landed on the ground beside me, then pushed up again, leaping toward the Hollow’s face. Whatever barrier had prevented Silas’s magic from getting through obviously had no effect on the physical realm, and Connery slammed against the Hollow’s body, knocking it back several steps.
Connery crushed the bottle between his teeth, hurling it toward the Hollow’s head.
At the same time, Silas threw a second ball of flames through the air. This time, he hadn’t been aiming for the Hollow.
The spell crashed against my chest, melting the icy prison that held me. I pushed my arms out from my body, cracking what was left of the ice and quickly lunging toward the Hollow while it was still off-balance.
Connery’s aim had been a little off, and he hadn’t hit the Hollow’s eyes. Instead, the gypsum bomb had disintegrated most of the left half of the thing’s head.
The Hollow turned its eyes on me, sending a blast of blue energy straight toward me. I spun, barely dodging the spell as he lifted his sword again.
I grabbed a gypsum bomb from my pack and jumped high, smashing the bottle against his face. The Hollow took another step back, shaking his head as if to get free of the liquid that now took its eyes. The blue light faded as mud slid down what was left of its head.
Connery locked his jaws around the Hollow’s wrist, tugging downward to try to drop its hold on the sword, but the Hollow was too strong. It removed its other hand from the sword’s hilt and grabbed Connery by the scruff of his neck.
The Hollow threw him so hard, Connery nearly slammed into Silas more than twenty feet away. Silas shifted to smoke, dodging the wolf. Connery lay against the stone floor, his body trembling as he whimpered and tried to stand.
I reached for my dagger and another gypsum bomb just as the Hollow slammed his sword on the ground a second time. The same blue blast rolled out in waves, affecting the entire area in front of him.
I couldn’t shift to get out of the way, so instead, I jumped, grabbing the Hollow’s arm as I ducked behind him, barely missing the blast.
One quick glance at my friends told me I was now fighting alone. I didn’t have the power of fire the way Silas did, and all three of them were now coated in the same thick ice that had held me moments ago.
I had to end this thing now, or we’d all be dead.
The Hollow turned toward me, swinging his sword and just barely missing my head as I dropped to my knees on the floor. I quickly smashed the gypsum bomb against the blade of the dagger and stood before he had a chance to swing again.
I summoned all of my strength and buried the dagger in the Hollow’s chest.
The sword clattered to the ground, and the Hollow lifted its hands to my dagger, trying to pull it from its own chest. And damn, that thing was strong. Pieces of its hands crumbled off as he gripped the blade and pushed against me.
I was strong, but I was no match for this thing without my ability to use magic.
I needed more leverage. I took a deep breath and ran forward, slamming into the hilt of the dagger with my chest like a hammer.
The Hollow went completely still as blue liquid poured from its heart, oozi
ng around the blade of the dagger. It fell to the floor with a thud and turned to dust.
Breathing heavily, I reached down to retrieve the dagger and placed it back in the sheath at my waist. I was prepared to have to chisel my friends out of the ice, but apparently the Hollow’s death had also released its magic. The ice surrounding them melted, and they walked toward me, out of breath and tired, but alive.
“You’re Rend, aren’t you?” a woman asked.
I turned to her and gave a small smile. “And you’re Mary Kathryn,” I said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“This is the best of circumstances,” she said, laughing and clapping her hands together. “I thought I was going to die in here. Where’s Franki? Is she with you?”
She leaned against the bars of her cell, studying the members of our group. Her smile faded when she saw that Franki wasn’t with us.
“The Mother Crow has her,” I said. “I’ll explain everything once we’re out of this place. Azure, can you open this please?”
“Sure thing, boss,” she said.
She waved her hand over the lock, and the door popped open. Mary Kathryn walked out and threw her arms around me.
“Thank you,” she said. She stepped back to look at everyone. “Thank you all. Now, let’s get out of here before any more of those things arrive. And I want to know what’s happened to my daughter.”
I took her hand and started walking toward the exit, but something was beating on the doors down there. More Hollows.
Azure grabbed my arm.
“Wait. I think I have enough energy left to do this, but we’ll see,” she said.
She hooked a finger around a silver chain at her neck and pulled a locket from under the neck of her shirt.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” she said. “I hope.”
She walked over to the stone wall at the end of the corridor and opened the locket, revealing a tiny little door. She dumped it over, and the door fell into her hand.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered.
She closed her eyes, and a shimmering light surrounded her, revealing the outline of iridescent wings fluttering at her back. She pushed her hand forward, transforming the wall of the dungeon into a full-sized doorway.
I stared, mouth open as she laughed and pushed the door open.
“After you,” she said. “But hurry, because I can’t hold this for long.”
I didn’t even bother to ask where it would take us. Anything that got us out of this castle was fine by me at this point. If we had to face another Hollow like that last one, we wouldn’t have the power or strength to defeat it.
I took Mary Kathryn’s hand and walked through the doorway.
The familiar vibrations of the music brought a smile to my face as I stepped onto the dancefloor at Venom.
The crowd backed away, a look of shock on many faces as the five of us walked through a hovering doorway. And I could hardly blame them.
One second, they must have been dancing in a club, enjoying the vibe, and the next, a doorway had appeared out of nowhere.
Some trick.
As soon as Azure stepped through, the doorway disappeared, and she collapsed.
I fell to my knees to catch her before she hit the floor.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered. “Now, go get Franki.”
The hint of a smile crossed her lips just before she passed out.
Less Of You
Franki
I spent the hours after Mary Krista left my room practicing my meditation and choosing to focus on all the things I loved about Rend, rather than my anger toward the Mother Crow.
It was so strange how that simple change made my entire body feel different.
In the past, when I’d practiced connecting to my power, I’d always been focused on the darkness. On my inability to move past it or the results I knew would come from it.
I had been so focused on fear that I’d completely missed the fact that there was so much more inside of me than just the darker sides of my magic. I hadn’t realized that I had control over my own power.
I’d simply felt that I was burdened with this legacy of evil, and I’d made the decision to give it complete control.
But now, after seeing what Solomon had done in that ritual room in my dream, I understood something I might never have found otherwise.
Peace inside the chaos.
The more I sat there in meditation pose, focusing on the love inside of me, the more I felt the darkness melt away.
My anger turned to gratitude. My sorrow turned to hope. The darkness turned to pure light that seemed to radiate from my core and cover me in a bright yellow glow.
And the strange thing was that this lighter side of my power was so much stronger than the darkness had ever been. It was as if the vibrations running through me had been amplified.
But the tricky thing was to hold onto it.
It seemed like such a simple thing, really. Just hold onto the happy thoughts, right?
But it was extremely difficult to shut off my fear and my rage. No matter how hard I tried to breathe and focus on the light, thoughts of what was really happening to me always appeared, disrupting my power.
I thought of my love for Rend and filled with bright energy, but the next moment, the realization that I might never see him again seeped into that brightness and dimmed it.
It was a constant struggle to keep my mind in the right place.
After a while, I felt as though I were two different people, fighting for space in my own mind. There was the joyful, grateful Franki who had stood on the rooftops of Paris with Rend and dreamed of someday being his wife.
But there was also the condemned, cursed Franki who knew that there was no real way out of this situation. That I was going to die, no matter what anyone did to try and save me.
These parts of myself fought and struggled for attention. They both wanted control. They were both powerful.
And they were both right.
Both sides of me were true, but for some reason, it was so much easier to give in to the sadness and despair. The joy in dark times was infinitely harder, which is why I knew it was enormously powerful and important.
After another long session of practice, I finally dropped my connection to my power and collapsed onto the bed. This work was exhausting, and I wished I had realized the key to embracing the lighter side of myself months ago.
I was running out of time, and if Mary Krista’s suspicions were right, the more I allowed the darkness and the Mother Crow’s memories to take over, the faster the transfer would be.
I needed to keep practicing. Keep pushing.
I got up to splash cool water on my face and stretch my legs, but the moment I did, the door to my room clicked open.
Was it time already? I thought I still had hours until the Mother Crow went to bed, but maybe I’d been meditating longer than I realized.
I stepped toward the door, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“I didn’t think you’d be back—”
I stopped mid-sentence, my body frozen in place.
The Mother Crow stood in the doorway, her red eyes trained on me as she lifted a glass of water toward me.
“I thought I heard you up here,” she said. “Little feet walking across the floor.”
She shook her head and ran a grey tongue across her lips.
“Naughty girl. You were supposed to eat all your food and drink your water, but the dose I gave you should have knocked you out for the rest of the night,” she said, shaking her head and stepping toward me. “No doubt you figured out we were helping you sleep after the first meal this morning, but I expected you to be a good child and obey us. How did you manage to avoid the dose this evening? Mary Krista says you ate all of your food, but that you accidentally knocked over your water.”
“Yes,” I said, glancing toward the door. �
�But it was an accident. I didn’t know there was anything in the water. Only the food.”
She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “She should have made you another glass, but she said she didn’t know where to get the sleeping mixture,” the Mother Crow said. “I will have to punish her, of course, but that’s none of your concern. Now, drink this.”
She pushed the glass toward me, and I reached out to take it, struggling to even control my own body. When the Mother Crow was near me, I seemed to almost lose myself. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist her even if I tried.
Panic filled my heart as she stared at me, expecting me to drink this sleeping potion.
If I did that, all our plans would go right out the window. There was no way I could leave here tonight if I couldn’t even walk or regain consciousness on my own.
But what choice did I have? Even if I did dump this water on the floor, she would just make another one. There was no getting out of it.
Some deep part of me said to hold onto hope. To trust and believe that I could still find a way home. A way to live.
But right now, the stronger part of my mind told me that hope was gone.
“Drink,” she said, her nostrils flaring.
My arm moved upward, despite my internal protests. She was making me do this. She was controlling me like a puppet.
And I needed to prove to myself I could resist her.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, imagining all the fear and tension dropping like a blanket onto the floor, leaving me lighter and free. I focused on one happy memory. Rend’s face as he knelt beside the bed in Paris and held a ring toward me.
I focused on the love I felt in that moment, and suddenly, I regained control of my own arm.
I opened my eyes and placed the water on the coffee table.
“I will not drink this water,” I said, finally looking up to meet the Mother Crow’s angry gaze.
The moment I did, the fear and worry found its way back to my heart, threatening to put cracks in my happiness and my power. But I fought against it, choosing instead to only focus on Rend.
I poured my love into my own soul, blocking the Mother Crow’s vicious gaze from my thoughts as best I could.
