Circle of Fire (Prophecy of the Sisters, Book 3)

by Michelle Zink

  Myself on the cliff overlooking the lake where my mother sacrificed her life in the name of the prophecy.

  And finally, Dimitri’s face, his body moving over mine and lit by firelight in my small chamber at Avebury.

  Then there is only blackness, and relief washes over me as I float through it, wondering if I am, at last, dead. But of course it is not that easy, and a moment later I open my eyes to find myself standing on the same beach where I first learned about the strangeness of the Otherworlds and the power of thought. The ocean ebbs and flows at my feet, the same line of rocky caves blocking everything but the beach from view on my left.

  Looking around, I feel a moment’s uncertainty. Now that I’m here, I am not at all certain how to go about ending the prophecy. It seems strange, after everything that’s happened, after all the times I have sought to avoid detection by the Souls in the Otherworlds, to seek them out, but I believe that is what I must do. If it were as simple as wishing the Gate closed, it would be done by now. Yet I am here in the Otherworlds through the workings of the Stone, the Rite, and the keys. I can only assume that the others still cling to my hands in the physical world. That they continue to chant the words of the Rite. It is their part of our bargain, and I realize with renewed clarity that mine is to summon the Beast, though every moment of the last two years has been devoted to denying him.

  I know immediately that the beach is not a good place to do so, with the water on one side and the caves on the other. Neither do I wish to meet the Souls in the Void, for while it is true that entombment there may be my fate, I don’t wish to make it easier for Samael to see it done.

  No, I should like to meet them, to meet him, on familiar ground, and the moment I think it, I know exactly where I’ll go. I remember Sonia’s words from long ago, from the time when traveling the Plane was strange and foreign to me.

  Thoughts have power on the Plane, Lia.

  I think of Birchwood. Of the rolling hills that stretch in every direction. Of the forests that carpet the fields and the river that flows behind the great stone house. Of the graveyard where Henry’s body lies next to those of my father and mother.

  It is both comforting and painful. A fitting end to the burden of the prophecy.

  A moment later I am in the air, flying over the caves near the beach, sand dunes and sea grass giving way to gray-green plains that soon become extravagant green meadows. There are creatures beneath me, many of them, all running from the direction in which I fly, as if from a fire. Not even the animals want to be where I’m going. Only I fly toward the Beast, while everything else moves away from him.

  But there is no time to dwell on the thought. I begin to drop to the ground, marveling once again at the power of the Plane. That one can simply think about the person one wishes to see or the task one wishes to accomplish, and one is carried there by nothing but the energy of thought.

  Touching down, I expect to feel the softness of spring grass against my skin. Instead, something coarse scratches at the soft undersides of my feet. When I look down, I am surprised to see that the grass is brown and dead. I understand when I raise my gaze to the gray and black landscape around me. It mimics the fields surrounding Birchwood, but I recognize it as the dead field where I was once summoned to meet Alice.

  It is more than the grass and trees that are devoid of life. The very air seems lacking in oxygen. As if this world has been abandoned. As if everyone in the Otherworlds knows no good can come of being here, and they’ve all sought their escape. I turn in a small circle, looking for any sign of the Souls.

  I hear them—no, feel them—first.

  It begins as a rumble in the ground beneath my feet, as if a large animal is barreling toward me and will burst through the trees at any moment. My heartbeat speeds up, and I wait and listen, unsurprised to finally realize the sound is the beating of horses’ hooves in the distance. It is clear from the noise that there are a great many of them. Far more than ever before. The Beast has no doubt sent every one of his minions to join in this, the final capture and banishment of the one who might usher him into the world that is mine.

  Their horses approach with a swiftness that makes the speed of the Hellhounds seem sluggish by comparison, and I turn toward the line of trees that harbors the greatest noise, bracing myself for the appearance of the Souls and their steeds. It is obvious from the sound of them that they approach from every direction, but it is possible to fix my sights on only one area at a time. A moment later, I’m glad I chose the one I did.

  The Souls stream out of the forest, their arms raised, fiery swords glowing red. I had forgotten the enormity of them, for even a member of the Guard is no bigger than a regular man in the physical world. The Souls are the size of two mortal men, and all sitting atop mounts that would dwarf Sargent. They do not slow or hesitate upon seeing me standing in the field but surge forward with renewed vigor as if trying to apprehend me before I flee.

  But I do nothing. I did not bother to bring my bow or any sort of physical defense. The time for that has passed. Now it is my calling to will them toward me.

  And to fight with the strength bequeathed to me by my ancestors in the Sisterhood.

  By Aunt Abigail. By Aunt Virginia. And by my mother.

  It’s no matter now, for they are upon me in short order, streaming out on every side, encircling me until I am but a small animal in their sights. When I am completely surrounded, the Lost Souls, so many on every side that I cannot see the end of them, raise their swords in unison, a guttural howl erupting from their throats. Even without words, I recognize it as the victory cry that it is.

  I begin to shake, unable to hide my fear. They are enormous, their bodies hulking forms of muscle rippling beneath tattered clothing, their victorious grimaces terrifying and hideous behind matted beards.

  Closing in on me, they move their horses nearer, the giant animals baring their teeth, snapping at me as the Souls look on with obvious pleasure. I begin to think I’ll be spared the Void. That I will die here, trampled to death beneath the horses’ hooves before I get the chance to even attempt to close the Gate.

  But then I feel as if the beat of my own heart has suddenly multiplied. It is at first distant, so that I’m not sure it’s even there, but a moment later it grows stronger. I feel its approach both outside and inside my body until it surrounds me, body and soul. The crowd of Lost Souls begins to shuffle to one side, raising their swords and bowing their heads. The heartbeat grows stronger still, only a half-beat off my own, as the Souls step apart, making way for the Beast.

  He rises before me, clad in black. As with the Souls, his size is terrifying. But his countenance is that of a handsome man, and I have a brief memory of the moment on the Plane when his face morphed from this one to that of the fearsome beast who chased me through the woods of my travel, swatting at me with razor-sharp claws. I must not forget it. Must not be lulled by this false and captivating face. By the heartbeat still trying to beat in time with my own.

  He looms before me. If he were to charge, I’d be nothing but rubble at his feet. Yet he does not approach on horseback. Instead, he surprises me by dropping to the ground in one swift motion, more graceful than any mortal, despite his size.

  “Mistress. You honor me with your presence.” His voice is twisted and warped, the sound of one animal trying to coax sound from the body of another.

  I swallow, willing my voice to be strong. “I do you no such honor. I come in the name of the Sisterhood to close the Gate and banish you from the physical world forevermore.” I sound like a child, even to myself, but it is all I can think of to say.

  He approaches me in large strides. His boot steps rattle the ground beneath my feet and seem to reverberate far beyond the world in which we stand.

  “You do not have the Guardian.”

  I lift my chin. “Perhaps not, but I seek to close the Gate, as the prophecy says is my right.”

  His eyes narrow as he comes closer, and I see that they are nearly gold
at their center, and ringed with red. “You are a stubborn mistress.” His voice seems to enter through my pores, winding its way through my body. I hear the rustle of wings at his back. “You will find peace only if you let go of your false notions.”

  He steps closer still, stopping a foot in front of me, his eyes boring into mine. I begin to lose focus on the world around me. The dead field, the Souls… they all fade away as his eerie voice worms its way into my veins, the words expanding in a repulsive hiss. “Your place is with me, Mistress, as you knowww. As you feeeel.”

  His wings unfold with a tremendous shake, unfurling on either side until they block out even the Souls standing behind him. The wings call to me, the lush feathers shining like polished onyx, speaking to me of peace and safety. From Samael and, most important of all, from myself.

  I shake my head, clinging to a remnant of my earlier purpose. “No. It’s not true.” But the heartbeat in my head has grown louder. It no longer beats just out of time with my own. Now our hearts pulse in perfect unison, and I feel my resolve begin to slip away.

  “Yesss,” he says, taking a last step toward me, touching my cheek with the back of his gloved hand. “It is only natural that you would feel our affinity for one another. There is no shame in it. You were born to usher me into the physical world. To reign at my side.”

  I shake my head to deny it yet again, but apathy seeps like fog from my mind until everything he says makes a curious sort of sense. A comforting sense of rightness settles over my shoulders as his wings fold around me, encircling me in warmth and softness. The heartbeat grows louder. It is one heart now—ours— beating together.

  And now it is all so simple.

  We are one, as the prophecy dictates. It is not my calling to refuse him. Doing so has only brought sadness and loss and darkness. The very things I sought to avoid by denying him entry.

  I settle into the sensuous wings, rubbing the skin of my cheek against the feathers, allowing my own heartbeat to settle more solidly into synch with his in the moment before my soul seems to rip in half.

  Crying out, I lift my head from the downy chest of the Beast. A tug on the astral cord connecting me to my body wrenches me from his embrace until I am tumbling once again through silent darkness. My fall seems endless, my first awareness afterward the sound of distant voices, chanting in unison words that are at once strange and familiar. It is the feel of something solid at my back that tells me I am no longer falling, and I open my eyes with effort, as if waking from a long sleep.

  The figures standing around me are warped and distorted, the place where their faces should be black and empty. It takes me a moment to make sense of the robed and hooded figures, but soon I remember: the keys. They are still reciting the words of the Rite, but I am lying on the ground near the fire, having somehow broken free of their circle. I remember the Beast with longing as another painful tear rips through my body, causing me to cry out into the night. My wrist burns as if on fire, and I lift my arm with effort, wondering if I am imagining the mark melding with the medallion, searing my skin as the two become one.

  I fling my arms out at my sides in a gesture of surrender as I realize that the Beast is coming. He is coming through me at last, and I give myself over to the pain, releasing myself from the burden of fighting. Grasping for the fleeting peace and sense of purpose I felt while encircled by his wings.

  I am just beginning to sink into the relief of it when the sound of hoofbeats reaches my ears. I think it is the Souls, coming to aid Samael. Coming to usher me toward the serenity I have earned by being his Gate.

  But the sound does not come from that distant part of me still in the Otherworlds. No. These horses are here, just outside the circle of robed figures, and I turn my gaze toward them, too weak to lift my head.

  I hear the rise of masculine voices beyond the faceless figures that encircle me. The men’s voices are punctuated by one more feminine, beyond the circle.

  It is this voice that wins out over the others.

  “Let me through! I need to help my sister.”

  And suddenly Alice is here, kneeling by my side, clutching my hand in hers. I see other figures on horseback beyond the safety of our circle. The face of the fair-haired Guard comes to me through the night, distorted by my own pain and the flicker of the fire, his expression wrathful as he watches Alice.

  Now I know. The Guard was in pursuit. They were giving chase all this time. But it was not me they were trying to stop. Not this time.

  It was my sister.

  “Are you with me, Lia? Are you here or there?” I try to open my mouth to speak, but I cannot force the words from my throat. She continues without waiting for my answer. “It doesn’t matter. Wherever you are, don’t listen to him. It is all lies.” She drops to the ground beside me, stretching out and taking my hand in hers. Her eyes are overflowing with sadness, and with something else I have not seen in their depths for a very long time. Love.

  “Do you think this will make me good again?”

  I do not have time to answer. As soon as her hand meets mine, there is another great tug, and this time I am spinning through the blackness with my sister.

  40

  “You!” Samael spits the word from his mouth. His dark wings flutter, stirring up an angry wind. He is back on his mount, some feet from where Alice and I now stand in the dead field.

  She doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “We must repeat the Rite together now, Lia.”

  She begins chanting the words, just as the keys and I did in the moments before I was transported to the Otherworlds: “Sacro orbe ab angelis occidentibus effecto potestatem sororem societatis convocamus Custos Portaque ut Diabole saeculorum te negaramus in aeternum. Porta se praecludat et totus mundus tutus a tua iracundia fiat.”

  It takes a moment for her instructions to make their way through my addled consciousness, but soon I begin repeating the Rite with her. Our voices rise above Samael and his Souls, winding their way through the strange silence of the dead fields. The Souls shuffle on their mounts as our words grow bolder, louder. Their horses begin to back away, despite the urging and whipping of the Souls who are their masters.

  Samael’s golden eyes find mine, the red rings glowing around them. “You are making a grave mistake, Mistressss.”

  Strength gathers behind my words as I raise my voice with my sister’s. I have always known that we would be stronger together. I wonder if Alice knows it now, too.

  The wind grows in strength, and now I both hear and feel it. It rises like a cloud around us, encircling the Beast, Alice, and me until we are cocooned in our own cyclone. My hair whips around my face, and I have to fight to keep my body upright against the force of it.

  Samael turns his gaze to Alice. “You will pay dearly for your betrayal.” He doesn’t shout over the wind, yet I hear him perfectly.

  Alice meets his eyes, never flinching, ceaseless in her repeating of the Rite.

  A moment later a terrific crack sounds above us. I raise my eyes to it and am somehow unsurprised to see a huge tear in the sky of the Otherworlds. Samael’s eyes follow mine, his countenance beginning to change from that of a man to something else entirely.

  A monster.

  A Beast.

  He levels his evil eyes, now almost entirely red, at Alice. “If I go, you go as well.”

  For a moment I feel as if I’m gazing into water for scrying. His figure shimmers, his clothes tearing with an audible rip as his body grows taller and larger still, wrenching itself free of the fabric that encased his manly form. The figure that emerges is not the smoothly muscled shape of a man. It is twisted, deformed, and just when I think I cannot take my eyes off the terrifying transformation, his face shimmers, expanding along the jawline to reveal impossibly sharp teeth. They rise to points as sharp and fine as a sword, snapping at us with an explosive roar, his gaze, full of vengeance, on Alice.

  But she does not so much as pause in her recitation of the Rite, and I feel the first whisper of fe
ar for my sister. Even now, after all that has happened, after all she has done, I do not want to see her consigned to the Void.

  Seeing her determination in the strong set of her jaw, I continue speaking the Rite in time to her words. With another horrifying crash, the crack in the sky grows larger, and the whole world seems to tilt beneath my feet. Samael casts a glance upward before gathering the reins of his horse. The animal rears on its hind legs, casting a long shadow over everything around it in the moment before Samael fixes his gaze on us and charges.

  “Do not stop reciting the Rite, whatever happens, until you are back safely in our world, Lia. Promise me, or it will all be for nothing.”

  I pause just long enough to shout over the howling wind. “I promise.”

  We continue our chant in perfect unison as Samael gallops toward us, his eyes on Alice alone. I no longer feel his heartbeat in time with mine, but my own heartbeat more than makes up for it as he draws closer. I don’t know which is louder, the shrieking wind or the thunderous sound of Samael’s approach, but I remember my promise and do not cease my chanting even when he is directly in front of us. Even when he bends lower, reaching for my sister as he passes. He wrenches her away from me, and I grip her hand as tightly as I gripped it in the moment she pulled me from my death in the river behind Birchwood.

  But it is no use. My strength is no match for Samael’s, and Alice is tugged from my hands. He flings her onto the front of his horse, his great wings drawing around her until she completely disappears from sight. Turning the horse from me, he starts toward the forest.

  He does not get far.

  A moment later his horse seems to slow before stopping altogether. I see the animal struggling to keep its footing against some invisible force. It rears and whinnies in the instant before it is lifted upward, the Beast and my sister still on its back, toward the ripped seam in the sky above.

  Even from my position on the ground, I see the Beast and his steed fight against the power pulling them toward the crack in the sky. But whatever force takes hold, whatever force my sister and I conjured together, is more powerful than even Samael.