Coven Keepers (Dark Fae Hollows Book 10)

by Thea Atkinson

  “What the fuck?” one of them screeched. “What the fuck do they want?” He jammed the lever hard to the right, snapping the door closed and cutting off access. The grim ones swarmed the bus, pressing against the windows until everyone pushed their lumens somewhere beneath their clothes and cut off the light.

  We were left in utter darkness as we listened to the sounds of the grim ones clawing at the bus and groaning. They almost sounded like they were in pain.

  I rolled over onto my back and stared toward the ceiling. “Brad,” I said. “Brad must have done something to Pied Piper them here.”

  “No,” the brigand said. “We’ve been having trouble with them for weeks. Ever since you got here, Ari.”

  “Hey,” Ari rasped. “Don’t pin this on me. They’re grim ones. It doesn’t take much to get their attention.”

  “We didn’t have this much trouble until you joined us,” the brigand said.

  “Listen, what y’all did before I got here to piss off the darkness is beyond me. And if you remember correctly, I’ve taken down my share.”

  “Ya. Way more grim ones than we’ve ever had to deal with before.”

  “Think about it,” Ari said. “People are going dark in greater numbers every day. Of course the grim ones are going to increase.”

  The way he said it made me remember he’d yet to show me his lumen. He was hiding something. That was clear. Whatever he was to these brigands, it wasn’t a long-term thing. No one wants full light, Everly. Those were his words. Full light would make the world worse, not better.

  I lay there letting those words echo through my mind, trying to work out what he’d meant. I’d assumed his lumen was weak and dying, but what if it wasn’t? What if he had another motive for infiltrating a band of brigands intent on gathering light and enslaving humankind so they could earn a paltry amount of more light until they could find more humans to fuel their next top up?

  It would explain why he’d not alerted his comrades to my magic. Maybe he had plans for it, same as he had plans for Uriel, and they had nothing to do with the human coven keeper. My stomach hurt with the thought of what this man might truly be. I felt betrayed and angry.

  “He’s Fae,” I said, suddenly grasping it. “He’s Fae, he wants the boy for the Dark Coalition, and he’s using you all to do it.”

  “Everly,” Ari said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The first brigand swore. “Maybe she does, Ari.”

  “Trust me,” Ari said. “I’m no Fae.”

  He said it like he had a mouthful of bile. No one liked the Dark Coalition. Even the Fae were wary of them. But that didn’t mean anything. Anyone could pretend. Heck. I was doing it and I was horrible at pretending.

  It occurred to me that it was as good a time as any to force things to a head. Get them fighting. Grab Uriel. Slip out the back while the grim ones were focused on what was in the bus, and not what was trying to slip back through it.

  I rolled onto my feet and pushed to a stand. “Prove it,” I said in the direction of where I thought Ari was. “Show us your lumen.”

  “No.” It was said with a flat tone, as though there was no arguing with it.

  “Why not, Ari?” I taunted, working it now because I knew the men in the bus wouldn’t waste time ambushing him. I felt a little sick knowing what might happen to him after I left, but I couldn’t think about that. If he was Fae, I couldn’t let him take Uriel.

  I couldn’t see where everyone was, but I only needed to make out Ari. I closed my eyes, all the better to focus. Inhaling deep, I sought the telltale scent of beach and musk. I felt someone creep up behind me and flinched when his voice hissed into my ear.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered. “These men are not good men.” His hand scooped about my waist as he pulled me close against his chest. The back of my neck felt hot and moist as he buried his face in my hair. “I swear,” he said. “If one of them comes at me—”

  He didn’t have time to say more, because they came for him then. Even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the sound of thundering feet. And I was right in the way. I used Ari’s arm about my waist as leverage when one of the brigands came at us, and swung him like a meaty bat into his comrade. They scuffled together, falling into a ball at my feet.

  I felt along the seats, hoping for a tiny head to meet my palm.

  “Uriel,” I whispered. “Where are you, boy? Come to me.”

  The brigands had all leapt on Ari by then. I heard several grunts and groans. Someone yelped and screamed that biting wasn’t fair. I thought I saw the back door heave open. For a heart-stopping moment, I imagined the grim ones had found a way in, but then I heard a voice that stopped my heart cold.

  “Where is the bastard?” it said.

  Sweet Miriam. Gus. It couldn’t be. I knew it couldn’t, and yet the timbre was unmistakable even through the gargling and guttural coarseness added to it. And if I had any doubt at all that the beastly man had survived Ari’s attack, it was erased when the entire bus lit up with blinding light, bathing the entire vehicle and its riders in white glow that for one agonizing second showed every face in unforgiving detail.

  Two of them cried out in pain, and someone else shrieked with such high pitch that it drilled into my ears and forced my arms around my head for protection. I tucked my chin into my chest, seeking shelter from the folds of my coat. I couldn’t decide which pain was greater, that of the light or of the screaming. I knew everyone in the bus felt the same because no one was moving anymore. Whatever retribution they exacted upon Ari for the trolling in of the grim ones, they’d abandoned it in favor of their own survival instincts.

  Because the light hurt. Sweet Miriam, it hurt.

  There was no relief, not even if I scuttled backward like a crab and crammed myself beneath one of the seats. The screaming went on and on. There was nothing for me and those agonizing seconds except the pain and the residual flashes of images I’d caught before my instinct bid me to protect myself.

  The man who had entered through the back door was indeed the brigand I’d seen fall into the shadows beneath Ari’s blade. But the plain and simple truth of it was that he was no longer a man.

  Transitioning, my mind whispered. But that wasn’t the thing that surprised me the most. I’d seen one other thing besides the pulsing black veins creeping up Gus’s neck toward his temples. The source of the light.

  That knowledge was enough to open a crack between my fingers even as the rest of them were still shielding their eyes from the pain. It was one of the hardest things I had to do, to force myself to squint out into full light to see for myself what I thought I’d seen before I fell to its agony.

  Ari lay in the aisle on his back. His shirt gaped open, his lumen shining its beacon over the interior of the bus. He looked magnificent in his rage as he lay there, his chiseled jaw clenched in fury and his eyes mad with fierce intent as he took in Gus’s form at the head of the bus. And then he pulled his shirt closed, smothering the glow.

  Lumens lit up from everywhere in the bus right then. I scrambled out from beneath the bench.

  “It’s not the boy,” I gasped. “The oracle made a mistake.”

  Ari gave me a bewildered look, and then Gus spotted me. His expression shifted to one of maniacal pleasure, his lips turning up in a snarl when he saw me standing up. Yet it was all one drawn-out sticky fiber of time because I had more important things trying to shuffle their way past that information.

  “You,” Gus said. “How good can things get?”

  Ari’s look of puzzlement at my outburst disappeared in the face of Gus’s frighteningly stoic tone, changing to one of urgency. I didn’t need a full blanket of light to make out the word Ari mouthed at me.

  “Run,” he said.

  But I wasn’t about to run. Now that I knew the chosen one wasn’t a child after all, that he wasn’t a helpless little bird who needed tender and careful defense, now that I knew what I’d come for was a full-grown man, I laug
hed out loud because I couldn’t help myself.

  Because now I knew I was going to fight.

  Chapter 13

  I ran for Ari as he pushed to a swaggering stand, making it to him just as Gus pulled a broad blade from the back of his jeans and made a slice for tall man in front of him. He missed by a mere inch as I collided into Ari’s chest and rummaged around his shirt for the buttons, desperate to pluck them free of their restraints.

  “Tear your shirt,” I hissed at him. “Your lumen. Get to it.”

  His fingers touched mine for one instant that made my heart chirp in my chest as I remembered when I’d touched him before. Then he brushed my hands away with a brusque movement and the chirping stilled, replaced with the recollection of what needed to happen now, in this instant.

  One more heartbeat later, and the glare from his lumen broke out into the bus, making the men cry out again from the pain of its searing light. Not me. I was ready for it. I had squeezed my eyelids half closed and was already gathering magic when my hands left Ari’s shirt. The tingle was already zinging up my forearm when Gus shrieked in agony and swore he would kill us slowly and painfully.

  I didn’t hesitate. I threw my arms out in front of me, aiming for the men with the magic swirling around my fingertips and whirling about my wrists. Something akin to glee filled me as I took aim. These men all deserved to die by the light they thought to sell. I didn’t feel one trace of pity for them. It felt good to use my magic. It felt like it had been sulking in the back of my mind, wanting to be loosed. My chest ached with the longing to liberate it. I felt it gather at my fingertips, coiling there, ready to fly. Like I had in the few moments I’d confronted the kraken atop his dismal waters, I felt all powerful, buoyant with energy.

  I was shuddering with glee and about to loose the blast when Ari’s command stopped me short.

  “Don’t kill them,” Ari shouted. “Everly. Don’t.”

  “What?” Holding back the magic was akin to holding back the tide, yet I managed. The magic prickled painfully in my fingertips, wanting free. I side-eyed him, trying to work through the murk of magic and delirium of power.

  He looked panicked and earnest. His blue eyes had gone wide with urgency. The curls that had escaped his man bun moved against his jawline as he shook his head at me. “Don’t.”

  I groaned. Sucking the magic back in was not possible. Not now. I was already too far gone, like an darkheart pear about to let go its stem and fall at the root of its master and maker.

  “Damn it,” I said and sent the magic anyway, but with just enough power that I could see each of them jerk backward as it struck them, not with deadly force but with enough energy to lift them from their feet and throw them against the windshield of the bus. The remainder of the magic coursed a trail over my skin, lifting gooseflesh as I watched the brigands fall, each one, into a crumpled heap, stunned and unconscious. At least for the moment. I sighed with relief and release.

  “Come on,” I said to Ari and grabbed for his elbow. “We have to run.”

  “Wait,” he said, shrugging me off.

  “Wait?” Was he insane? We had our chance. We couldn’t waste it.

  “The boy,” he said.

  I shook my head. I felt bad about leaving him behind, but I couldn’t let the boy slow us down. I just couldn’t.

  “I’m trying to save your dumb ass,” I said.

  He sucked his teeth and spun about as he stood there, obviously looking for Uriel and muttering something about not needing saving from a slip of thing who couldn’t keep her mouth shut long enough to keep from getting assaulted.

  I grit my teeth and managed to smother the urge to kick him, instead gripping his arm more tightly than I had intended.

  “Come on,” I said. “We don’t have time for the boy.”

  Ari set his jaw in a stubborn way. “I don’t care what you think we have time for. He’s coming with me.”

  He bent to forage beneath the bench next to him. Uriel came from underneath the seat, blinking in the light of Ari’s lumen and looking terrified.

  Eager to be out of there, I gave a short jerk of my head. Ari made a dash for the front of the bus and pulled the lever of the door open, letting the dozens of grim ones claw through each other to get in. On his way back, he scooped the boy up from the floor and tucked him into the crook of his shoulder as he ran. Both of their lights blinked out, and all we had to see by was the weak glow from the brigands’ lumens. Their light was enough to lure the grim ones toward them instead of us, and we raced for the back door.

  Because Ari was in front of me, he kicked it open and we spilled out into the street.

  Whatever grim ones had been behind the bus had already swarmed toward the side as they eddied forward, trying to get into the front door. It was as though they had one mind, like a single wave moving to its shore. Once they struck that edge, they would eventually flow backward and whatever safety we had gained in these moments would be gone.

  I paused just long enough to make sure the grim ones weren’t following us, and it wasn’t until I turned back around that I realized Ari had disappeared into the shadows. I recalled then he had said he was taking the boy with him, not us.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, this time without cringing because I’d already realized that in this human realm, cursing was a much different concept than in Avalon. In some cases, it was very satisfying. I had the distinct impression that Ari had just used me to run off with the boy. He obviously had no idea he was the one who was valuable. No doubt he planned to sell the boy for his own ends, thinking to disappear when he got what he wanted.

  I sighed loud enough that it made me wince for fear the grim ones would hear me. He was a cagey one, that Ari, but he couldn’t have got far. Not in this darkness, and not unless he used one of their lumens to light their escape. And not with the boy in his arms.

  I wasted no time beating my feet against the asphalt in pursuit, but as I sprinted into the shadows that led toward the belly of the city, things just grew darker instead of the light-sprinkled darkness I’d enjoyed on the fringes. It seemed that civilization had shuffled closer to the water as it lost its natural light. It made me wonder what might be in the center of the city that could keep mortals hovering about the edges instead of at the hub where they might collect and concentrate individual lumens into something akin to old-fashioned electricity.

  The deeper I trudged into the core of the city, the more I realized my night vision just wasn’t as good as Ari’s. If he was as blind as I was, he’d be skulking about somewhere, same as me, trying to navigate while bumping into everything in his path. I’d bumped into several brick walls already and had skinned my knee once when I’d taken a spill over a cement canister. I needed to light my way to speed things up, even if he didn’t.

  I was rounding a corner, with just enough purple glow moving in front of me to keep me from running headlong into a brick wall, when I heard a swell of clicking in the darkness beyond me. I peered ahead of me, past the purple orb of light. The shadows in the darkness looked to be moving.

  Great. Just what I needed. More grims. But I was too far gone to stop now, and with Ari only a few minutes ahead of me, I couldn’t let him slip from my grasp when I was this close. I was just going to have to keep using my magic and hope it didn’t troll more of them in than I could manage.

  I expected them to come at me, but not the multitude of them. There were so many racing for me that the blast of stink carried far in advance in a tsunami swell. I blasted each creature that came within striking distance with deadly force. I didn’t have time to think about whether Ari and the boy had managed to slip away from them, or even how they did it. All I had time for was to throw one jolt after the other at every shadow that rushed me.

  If the grim ones from the bus had enjoyed their fill of the brigands and headed for me because they’d caught scent of my magic, I’d have to find some side alley to slip into. But for now at least, they were all ahead of me. And I could deal wit
h a rush of assailants if I kept my head. I might even be strategically decimating them while Ari and the boy holed up somewhere nearby, waiting for the coast to clear before they slipped back into the alley where I could see them. The hope carried me through the first dozen grim ones.

  Then three rushed me at once. I dropped instinctively and roundhouse kicked as I fell to the pavement. My palms met the asphalt and a rough section tore into the tender skin. I somersaulted. Spun in a crouch and used the centrifugal force to send my legs flailing into anything that came at me. I felled them like trees at first, and I imagined no witch had ever done combat with so many enemies at once. I felt like a goddess, like the Benevolent Miriam with all her righteous anger and the power of good behind her.

  Throwing bolts of purple energy this way and that, I lit the darkness around me in a haze of magical fog. I could see how many of them there were, and I knew it was too many. I began to think that the coven had sent me because they knew it was an impossible task. How better to get rid of a hated witch than to send her off on a mission that couldn’t be accomplished. And if by chance I managed it, they would at least enjoy the happy happenstance of it.

  Too bad. I was going to win this challenge, and I was going to save the world. It was my destiny. Even the oracle said so. And each one of those elitist witches in the coven who ridiculed and ostracized me was going to have to choke on their hatred and prejudice. I wasn’t going to let a few disgusting dead human creatures rob me of my chance of acceptance. Not now. Not ever.

  I was beginning to think I could win, actually. I had just rammed my fist up into the fleshy chin of one whose yawning mouth had clamped onto my brow, thinking to suck my eyes free of their sockets.

  He jerked upward for one second and then fell at my feet. I shook my fist free of offal and slime, but then one of them crashed into me from the side.

  I fell onto my back.

  My breath hissed out of my lungs mercilessly, leaving me sucking at air like a dying fish. Images of the kraken came back at me. For a second, with the stars moving in front of my vision as my blood tried to oxygenate, I thought the black shadow looming over me was actually its gaping black mouth about to swallow me whole again.