The Omen of Stones

by Casey L. Bond

  Releasing my stones, I darted through Sky’s fog barrier and Lyric’s humming blockade. We sprinted through the night, blazing a path through the unfamiliar wood. I felt River just up ahead. I focused on him and asked Fate to lead me to him. “They’re coming!” I clamored, hurrying toward River. “Run faster!”

  “Who?” Sky screamed, chasing after me with Lyric by her side.

  The stones underfoot thrummed with urgency. “River! They’re coming!” We slid down an embankment, leapt across a small brook, and scuttled up the other side, only to do it again and again.

  “Hurry…they’re close,” I warned my sisters.

  “Who?” Sky yelled again. “Who is coming?”

  “I don’t know, but the stones are telling me they’re coming, and whatever it is…it’s bad,” I yelled over my shoulder, tripping over a tree root I didn’t see. As I hurtled toward the ground, River was there to catch me.

  He looked me over frantically, but when he was sure I was okay, looked behind me to see what we were running from. Whatever he saw made his eyes widen and his jaw went slack. “Get behind me. Now,” he gritted.

  He spun me around so I was at his back and my sisters landed on either side of me. Though I couldn’t see the spirits, I realized what had been chasing us the moment a blast of frosty air roared over the land. My hair blew backward and froze in an instant. The once verdant leaves underfoot coated with frost and a great shadow fell. It was twilight when we dropped our wards, yet now looked like the darkest part of the night.

  Fate’s steadfast presence filled my senses.

  “We have to go as one,” River instructed carefully. “Spirit to the Center when I say.” Lyric and Sky grabbed my shoulder while I clutched River’s hand tightly. “Now!”

  In a blink, we landed in the Center, the circumference of which was completely empty. “Get in the Center!” River screamed, running to the House of Air and flinging open the door. “Brecan, get every witch into the Center!”

  Without pause, Brecan shouted River’s command throughout his House. Lyric ran to the House of Fire and shouted to Ethne, and within seconds the Fire and Air witches streamed into the pentagram. Mira met me at her door as Sky shouted to Ivy. In moments, Water witches and Earth witches spirited to join us, filling the pentagram.

  “Where’s Arron?” Mira shouted. She searched every face, pushing from witch to witch before gathering her robes and sprinting toward the House of Fate.

  “Arron!” she shouted, throwing the door open. He clamped his hands on her forearms and let her pull him outside. “Sable, Tauren…Arron, to the Center, now,” she gulped. With grim determination, Mom spirited them across the lawn together.

  River

  My parents appeared within the pentagram’s sacred barrier just before the dark shadow fell over us. Fate managed to warn the triplets, and though I knew they felt the force of impending danger we faced in the forest, I wasn’t sure they saw what caused it, or whether they could now. It looked like a writhing mass of darkness, but it wasn’t solid. It was a conglomeration of souls, thousands of them, all knitted together in a seething, malevolent and hate-filled torrent. Spiteful, starving for death and thirsty for spilled blood.

  They are mine, Fate asserted to the horde of spirits.

  The souls moved as one, as if someone or something controlled them on puppet strings.

  “Sable!” the thing screeched in the tone of a thousand disembodied voices, though it reared back at the sight of her.

  Omen looked at Mom. “Only Fate witches can call on the darkness, right?”

  Mom nodded, a guarded look sliding over her face. It was the reason she had been ostracized, why even her own blood, my grandmother, kept her away from the other witches. They didn’t know or understand her magic, assuming she was dangerous because her mother had used Fate’s gift to hurt them. They hadn’t realized her heart was nothing like Cyril’s until she and Fate bound and defeated Cyril.

  “We must work together,” Omen told her. “All five of us. Only darkness can overpower shadow.”

  With a firm nod, Lyric began to sing the song we remembered hearing as children. When she sang, there was no meekness, no brokenness in her tone. She sang proudly and beautifully, allowing her voice and magic to wrap around us all. “Spirit and stone, song and sky, fate and future all align. What’s hidden in shadow, devours the light. Weave with the darkness to win the fight.”

  Sky suddenly erupted in a laugh, raising her hands and calling a violent storm to race toward us. Lightning forked across the sky as she called it into her hands. The witches around her shrank back to avoid the contorting bolts. “It’s a spell!” she shouted. “The words…the song. It’s a spell!”

  Understanding dawned across the assembled witches, who listened to Lyric and repeated her words until they knew the spell, adding their voices and power beneath the humming current. Water witches sang at a feverish pitch as Mira shouted commands, blasting the seething mass with wave after wave from all directions. Fire witches chanted the spell as they lent the forces of their incendiary affinity to burn the swell of dark souls. The collection of Earth witches attempted to leash the roiling mass with vines in an effort to tug it under the earth and bind it there, but the unbridled souls were too strong and determined. Something fueled them, constantly feeding their power and amplifying their energy.

  “Omen!” they shrieked, thrashing and writhing as the spell song built. The malevolent mass built into a thunderous wave that stretched over the Center, reaching out for my soul-mated.

  I stepped out of the Center, drawing their attention away from her. In the writhing mass were arms, legs, torsos, mouths, and cavernous pits where the eyes of the souls used to be. I stood between the souls and the living, ready to drag them back to their realm if need be. I dimly became aware that outside the Center, the realms began to blur. Color melded with the void, bleeding into gray and red, green and blue.

  The witches chanted the spell as Lyric spoke to the shadowed mass of dark souls, her sole attention focused on drawing out what she wanted from them. “Who is your maker?” The lilting cadence of her voice hypnotized them, and their frenetic movements slowed to a steady pulse.

  “The Goddess weaves all souls,” they spoke as one, writhing one over the next, a tangle of limbs and contorted faces, no longer pale, but tar-like and oozing. They watched her as intently as if there was nothing else in the world to look at and nothing else they could see. They eased closer to her, and since I was between them, closer to me.

  Unable to hear their voices, even though they were potently fueled with dark magic, Lyric looked to me for their answer and I gave it to her. Their sinister power expanded with every passing second. It was only a matter of time before they manifested on the physical plane.

  “The Goddess does not deal in darkness,” Lyric admonished. “Who sent you here?”

  “The dark witch,” they answered balefully.

  I told Lyric what they said. Unhappy with their response, she pressed them again. “Tell me her name.”

  “Cyril!” they hissed, the mass expanding and becoming stygian as they further manifested into the world of the living.

  The assembled witches screamed in terror and eased back against the pentagram’s border, threatening to push those farthest away out of the safe area.

  Lyric swallowed thickly as they appeared before her. Finally, every one of their dark features were finally visible, their voice something she could hear. “Where is Cyril?” Lyric pressed.

  “Anywhere she likes,” they answered.

  “Who stole Cyril’s soul from Fate?” she demanded, stepping toward them, focusing all her energy and magic on them.

  Their attention broke away from her and I knew Lyric was in trouble.

  Together, they lunged for her, clawing at Lyric just as Sky and Omen pulled her back into the protective lines of the Center, but n
ot before one of the dark souls slashed her face. Someone had pulled me back in, too. My dad. After searching me over for injuries, he quickly turned his attention back to the mass. They pulled back, but their movements once again became erratic and disorganized. They writhed and oozed, contorted and stretched.

  Lyric was okay, though blood pooled along deep slash marks on her cheek. Then something happened. The bright red blood that streaked down her face turned to tar. Lyric looked stunned for a second.

  “We have to rid her of their touch!” Mom screamed, pushing her way toward her.

  As she reached Lyric and began to recite a cleansing spell, the souls began to separate, tearing themselves apart and knitting themselves back together more loosely, like a sweater pulled too thin. They stretched to the left and right, surrounding the circle and clawing at the witches who were too close to the perimeter. The shrieks of witches filled the air. Shrill. Desperate. Terrified.

  They fought back with their affinities, but no longer working together, their individual efforts were futile.

  A witch was plucked out of the circle and pulled into the air. His sisters clung to his feet, holding tight to keep the lost souls from pulling him completely away.

  The mass fought back in earnest from every side, slashing those closest to the crowded barrier. Gashes and claw-marks appeared on throats, arms, hands, and their robes were shredded to ribbons. Blood quickly pooled and turned tar-black, slowly oozing from their arms, foreheads, eyelids, ears.

  Could Mom cleanse them all?

  They targeted Omen this time.

  “Omen!” they shrieked, building like a wave and curling toward her overhead. I couldn’t let them touch her. Couldn’t let them hurt her.

  Like a wave pushing me to the shore, something shoved me out of the circle, placing me exactly where I needed to be. I instinctively knew Fate had shoved me forward, toward my purpose.

  “River!” Omen shrieked. Sky and Lyric held her back, despite her fighting to break free of them.

  “You belong to me,” Fate said through me. The orb separated like a mass of flies, each torn from the others, and sucked into my skin. One by one, they flew into the center of my palm; I could taste their vile intentions, perceived their cruelty and the insidious hatred they held. How they craved to do their master’s bidding.

  “River, no!” Mom yelled, racing toward me.

  But before she could reach me, I’d collected them all. With an ear-splitting pop, their shrieking hushed. Everything in the Center went silent. The elemental witches, still tense, searched for the mass, unable to grasp that it was gone. They looked to their Priestesses and Priest, who tried to calm and reassure them, but even their eyes darted around their charges, sure that what they’d just witnessed wasn’t real.

  I stared at my shaking palm, a charred mark evaporating from the middle of it as I watched.

  Mom stood in front of me. She grabbed my fingers and splayed open my hand, observing as the last bit of darkness faded. “You’re okay?”

  I nodded. “Fate collected the souls.”

  With a bone-crushing hug, she kissed my cheek and carefully stepped away as Omen approached. I felt her before I turned to face her.

  “You could have been killed,” she sputtered, fighting for control. “You shouldn’t have stepped out of the Center.”

  “They were going to take you. I had to make sure you were safe.”

  “But you risked everything,” she breathed shakily.

  “Then consider us even, my soul-mated, because you risked everything to save me as well.”

  A wild feeling swept over me, one I knew wasn’t derived from Fate’s presence. He left the moment the souls were gathered. It was me. And it was her. It was the two of us together.

  I didn’t care who saw or who was watching, I cupped the back of her head and drew her toward me. Without hesitation, she kissed me with equally matched fervor. Raking her hands over the stubble on my jaw, nails parting rows through my hair, she pushed me closer.

  She was warm and soft and perfect, and when she kissed me, it felt like we’d done it a thousand times. There was no crashing of teeth, no awkwardness and no space between us. The world melted away, leaving only me and her. We were swept up in languid kisses more beautiful and dangerous than I’d imagined. I wanted to spend the rest of my days kissing her and drowning in everything that was Omen.

  Arron cleared his throat. “We hate to interrupt…” he rumbled. I could hear the smile in his voice and confirmed it was there when I finally managed to tear my eyes from Omen’s. “But we need to discuss what just happened.” He gestured to the area where the mass of dark souls had just been about to attack and devour us.

  “The better question is how that thing breached our border,” Mira clarified, still panting from the effort she and her witches had made.

  “That thing was composed of spirit and soul,” Sable explained. “It didn’t recognize our border, and it was strong enough to manifest in our realm because it was fueled by dark magic. It seems one of Fate’s own is using his power against him.”

  The part I didn’t mention but was all too aware of, was that it had specific targets among the Fate witches…first Omen, then Lyric.

  Uneasy murmurs rolled through the crowd of witches. Slowly, they spilled from the Circle after receiving assurances from their Priestesses and Priest that it was safe to do so. Arron herded me and the triplets into the House of Fate, trailed by my parents and the heads of each House.

  Morning bled into afternoon as we discussed what happened and argued about what to do next. Eventually, dinner was brought in from one of the other Houses.

  Throughout it all, I could only focus on Omen. Her scent. Her nervousness. She swiped her hands down her skirt so often I lost count. The way she shifted her weight, stood and paced, sat down again, and brushed against me. She consumed my thoughts. I just wanted to drag her away from all the plotting and what-ifs and kiss her until neither of us could breathe.

  “River,” Dad chastised sternly. “Have you heard anything we’ve discussed in the past half hour?”

  I leaned forward and let my elbows dig into the tops of my knees, scrubbing tired hands down my face. “Not really,” I answered honestly.

  “Well then, do you have a suggestion for how to handle the situation?” he asked.

  Snapping back to reality, I answered, “As a matter of fact, I do. I still think the Priest and Priestesses should ask the Goddess to allow Ela to help us; I think the other witches should still be trying to locate Lindey; and I think the Fate witches should seek his help in the matter as well. Ela bound Cyril to the soil before. Maybe we can bind her to Fate again and somehow seal her soul so that she can never escape – no matter who is helping her.”

  In stark contrast to the heavy conversation taking place inside, tinkling cricket song rose and fell outside the front door.

  Sky snorted and stood up, moving to stand next to Brecan, who was leaning casually against the wall. “You really weren’t listening,” she chided. “We’ve already agreed on most of that. I bet I can guess what’s been preoccupying your thoughts…or whom, rather.”

  Omen’s eyes found mine. She blushed and looked away. Was she thinking about me, too?

  I knew now wasn’t the time to become obsessed with my soul-mated, but I couldn’t stop thinking of her and her safety. Ultimately, I wanted them to make a decision and move toward something. Talking in circles was getting us nowhere, and the longer we remained stagnant, the more opportunity Cyril would have to strike again.

  Brecan pushed off the wall. “I’d like to call the Circle back together. River is right. We should discuss this with the Goddess and ask her blessing, if nothing else. If she feels generous enough to allow Ela to help from the spirit realm, all the better.”

  Sky hungrily watched Brecan move across the room and hold the door open for the Prieste
sses. He looked to each of us Fate-Kissed. “We can spell our circle, but it’s apparent that we certainly can’t fight dark souls using our affinities. They were useless earlier. Could you guard us as we call on the Goddess?”

  Sky was at the door before the rest of us could even say yes. “Of course,” she told him with a bright smile, sauntering out the door he still held and waving for us to join her.

  Brecan regarded her warily, like a puzzle he couldn’t figure out.

  Everyone would say Brecan was handsome, but no witch in Thirteen would dare to pursue a Priest so boldly. To her credit, Sky didn’t care about the rules or traditions here. If she was anything, it was persistent.

  I stood from the couch and held my hand out for Omen, who took it and held onto it even after she stood. Mom and Dad held a whispered conversation across the room. Coming to a decision, they crossed the room and approached us.

  “You should stay here,” I told them. “We’ll watch over them and then come back here.”

  Brecan was still holding the door as Lyric slipped outside and went to stand with Sky on the lawn. “We won’t go far into the woods this time,” he promised. “We may just convene from the back yard to be on the safe side.”

  With his words, Mom seemed to relax a fraction, but pinched her lips together in consternation. “I hope my grandmother will help you, River, but I’m afraid she may not want to help if I’m involved.”

  “That’s assuming the Goddess allows her to in the first place. Let’s take this one step at a time. I’ll talk to Grandmother Ela if her spirit is released.”

  Mom nodded at the door. “They’re waiting for you.” She gave Omen a small, forced smile of encouragement. I knew she wanted to come with us but wisely realized it would be better not to intervene in case Ela still held a grudge.

  Thus far, Cyril had sent two things to destroy us, both contrived of spirit. She would continue to probe our defenses and fight with the only thing she could control from her realm. We had to stop her before she figured out how to pour her soul into the body of someone living.