by Jenn Stark
“Please! Please help me!” I gasped, and Mary’s mother’s eyes widened with a flare of power so strong, I would have sworn she was a Connected herself. She reached out all the same, toward the huddled mass of bodies beneath me, my face up, eyes squinted against the wind, my arms tight around the limp, lost souls I carried, souls that could not fight this battle on their own, souls that needed champions to fight it for them.
Their champions raced toward us now. Arms outstretched, hands grasping, and in my mind’s eye, I felt a sudden surge of parental love, the desperate, rabid force of pain and guilt and loss and terror and endless waves of grief all bursting forth, becoming a beacon in the night. A beacon that not only guided me but pulled, gripping-grasping-straining, loving not what had been or could be but what still was, what truly was, and wanting it more than life itself. The force of that light ripped through the foundation of this far dimension that held the children, shattering its edges, wrenching it wide.
There would be nothing left of this place. I built that image in my mind, powering us through. Nothing left—nothing left. Never would it hold these children again, never would it hold anything. So twelve, not six souls would be freed this night; twelve, not six souls never would return.
The way home became clear despite the thunderous wind and roaring fire, and I drove my heels into the nothingness and pushed one last time—
And we were soaring then, racing again down the path that Blue had etched so clearly in my skin and mind. All the while, the beacon in the darkness far beyond was growing brighter and stronger and true. As we neared it, something else was shifting.
The burden in my arms started moving, shuddering to life, the papery-thin skin shucking off the children’s bodies like waxed paper, the skin beneath bright and warm, pink and healthy. Eyes and mouths were open now, startled and frightened and panicked and alive, so alive that I reached out again and found new tethers to hold. Nikki and Mercault, Dixie and Brody, four pillars driven into the ground to catch and bring us home.
I burst back into awareness with a rush of agony excruciatingly present and real. I surged upward, fists flying, my back seared with pain.
“Sara! Sara, relax, relax—breathe!” Nikki’s voice was strident, and I heard the panic in it, her fear fueling mine.
Something seriously wrong welled up inside me, my pain too heavy and whole for this to be right. I blinked my eyes open and didn’t hear the clicking noise that had accompanied the movement the last time, but my vision swam with red. I kept swinging and sensed her shift away, and my fists and face and hands were wet with a hot, steaming rain.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, can you never do anything the easy way?”
Suddenly, strong arms were around me, clamping my arms to my side, rendering my punches useless. Despite the agony of the pressure on my back, I smiled, feeling the strength and certainty of it. Brody. Officer Brody Rooks ten years ago, Detective Brody Rooks now. Here to save the children. Here to win the day.
I opened my mouth to thank him, to speak, but it filled with a dark and strange fluid. Not tears, I thought. Not rain either. Something…different. I sputtered and tried to swing away, but Brody held me close.
“The parents. They cannot see her.” It wasn’t Brody’s voice but the Magician’s. His tone was clipped, hard, and a moment later, his hands were over my eyes, my face, cool through the wetness, calming my thundering heart. My brain split in confusion—Brody and the Magician, both of them here, both of them…how?
Kreios’s voice sounded next. “I need but a moment.”
Then I heard the sound of excited shouts, questions, pounding feet, and felt my body being turned, sheltered, barricaded away from the barrage of humanity that seemed to be racing toward this room.
The children! I started, my eyes clearing as something rough and warm was wiped over my face, my neck.
“You’re all right, Sara, you’ll be all right.”
I couldn’t understand the importance, but something seemed different. Important. Strange. Armaeus’s lips brushed over my eyes, first the left, then the right.
“When this is done, find me,” he whispered, and even his voice sounded wrong, thick with emotion. “It will be all right.”
Then he was gone. I blinked my eyes open, and neither Kreios nor Armaeus were there. Only Nikki, Brody, and Dixie…and the children.
Nikki was at my side. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, girl, keep that towel on your eyes, EMTs will be here shortly.”
I struggled to a sitting position, held firmly by Nikki as she braced me against the chapel steps. My gaze went from the blood-soaked towel in Nikki’s hands to the scene in front of me, and I shrank away from the chaos for another long moment. She turned at the look on my face and cursed.
“Hang tight, cookie, it’s starting again. I’ll be right back.”
The children half sat, half lay in the center of the room, piled against each other, their heads covered with heavy hoods. Huge blankets were wrapped around them, a deadening weight. Was that how they had been transported to the Syx’s dimension? Total sensory deprivation to ensure their minds didn’t shatter?
It didn’t matter. Dixie and Brody were carefully stripping off hoods as EMTs rushed through the door. They took one look at me, and I waved them toward the children, dragging myself farther back in on the platform, away from the chaos of rebirth below.
As the children emerged from their hoods and blankets, they looked exactly as they had in the beams of light—in the images Viktor had shown me. Long, glossy hair, healthy skin. They seemed drugged, dazed, but they were responding to the EMTs with semicoherent sentences, blinking around owlishly. Already I could imagine Brody’s cop mind swinging into action. He’d want to protect the kids, get them evaluated, but he must know that wasn’t going to be possible.
My mind seemed stretched beyond its limits as I sensed the minds of the parents, all of them huddled in the main chapel. I had no need to trance to feel their power, drawing close to their bright light. Without them, their children wouldn’t be here. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it either. Without them, I wouldn’t have seen the miracle of a parent’s love in action, to know that, at its peak, it was stronger than even the most powerful of Connected magic.
My eyes filled again with a salty mix of blood and tears, but I couldn’t blank my thoughts in time. In the main chapel, Mary Degnan’s mother looked up, turning away from the other parents, her eyes seeing without seeing. Perhaps there was some Connected ability in her after all?
Either way, she stood, turned. And said something to the others that had them turning as well. Their shouted voices seemed to come through the very walls of the chapel, and the teenagers’ reaction was swift and profound.
They literally came to life.
Cries of “Mom!” and “Dad!” burst forth like pistol shots, and a quick glance between Dixie and Brody had them all turning, an adult to each child including the EMT’s, half bracing the children, half restraining them, their voices firm, urgent, and ultimately useless.
“Mary!” The first woman into the room was the tiniest, and she raced forward into the center of the teens and nearly bowled over her much taller daughter with the ferocity of her embrace. After that it was chaos, a tangle of parents and children crying, shouting, the strident voices of the EMTs ignored as reunited families alternately collapsed against each other and to the floor. There would be time for explanations later, time for Brody to come up with something—anything to explain where these children had been and how they were found. Time for the doctors and the therapists and the psychologists to work through the messy experience of bringing young souls back into a world that had gone on without them for far too long.
For now, there was only parents and their children, the most human of all bonds. And that was enough.
A new wellspring of pain blossomed within me as I watched the reunion. This was what I’d wanted, all those years ago. This was why I’d fought so hard and long. This was why I’d never stoppe
d searching for the children.
Not these souls, whom I’d believed I’d already lost. But the others, so many others. Children in every corner of Europe, Connected children, taken from their families and their homes to be used in a war they knew nothing about.
I had to find them. Keep them safe. Return them to the one thing that I knew was certain, the one thing I knew was true. The one thing I’d never had myself, in the end.
The one thing.
I felt the hand on my shoulder and smiled without turning. The flare of Connected magic was strong and ancient, but not as strong as Armaeus’s touch. I glanced up at Blue…and stopped, blinking away the blood and salt from my eyes.
When I could see again, the person in front of me still wasn’t Blue. And when he spoke, his voice was like a distant, howling wind.
“Hello again,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-six
The man who stood before me wore a long, dark, almost clerical robe, frayed at the bottom. His feet were shod in heavy boots, gray with dust, and he was lean and worn. His eyes were weathered as well, a deep and faraway blue, and they watched me with an eerie knowingness, a familiarity. Though I didn’t truly recognize him…I’d seen him before. I knew this man—this being.
“You were with Llyr,” I said abruptly. “The figure with it beyond the veil. I saw—you were there. That was you. You and your…lamp.” My attention sharpened. “You’re the Hermit, aren’t you?”
The Hermit of the Tarot Major Arcana was always depicted as a lone man, usually old, usually with a staff and holding his lamp high. Some say he searched for wisdom, some for an honest man, like Diogenes. But in most readings, he was the giver of wisdom, or the gateway to the arcane.
And now he stood in a Las Vegas wedding chapel, facing me with a gentle smile. “I have guarded the dragon Llyr for centuries, since it was last blasted beyond the veil,” he said. “At that time, it was decided that a creature so powerful could not be left alone. I long have questioned the choice I made. Llyr is strong. I am weak.” He shrugged. “And I am not always the best of guardians.”
His words struck me at odd angles, but I pushed on. “Are you here to rejoin the Council, then? Balance the power?”
He shook his head. “My position allows me to stay out of such battles,” he said. “I’m only here for a moment, and then I must away. Guarding Llyr requires more vigilance than ever. He grows stronger, and we do not know why.”
I nodded. “Then…why have you come?”
He shrugged, looking a little abashed. “I have long watched you from a distance, bound never to contact you, never to interfere with your growth, your life. But though I understood those rules for your protection, I couldn’t follow them. Not completely.” His smile wavered. “I suppose once you begin to break the rules, you lose a little bit of your awe for them. And I have broken far too many over my lifetime.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean, bound not to contact me? That doesn’t make any…”
Understanding struck me so forcefully that the Hermit winced, and I didn’t realize I’d stumbled back until he reached out to hold me steady. The zing of his power was there as well, but I couldn’t process it. It was too fresh. Too real. Too familiar.
“No. No way. You’re my…?” I broke off, unable even to say the word.
His words were quiet. “My name, before I ascended, was Willem of Galt. I have been on the Council since the era you would know as the Middle Ages. I did not realize the restrictions then. I was young.”
“Young, but…” Another realization. “You’re, um, not young.”
He lifted his brows, his expression rueful. “There have been times in my years when I have not remained on the Council. There have been times when my work has required mortality. On occasion for years at a time.” He shrugged. “During those periods, I have aged. Not noticeably, at the time, but enough that, combined with the several centuries that I have walked the planes, I show my years. Some of them more than others.”
I drew in a deep breath. “But if you’re on the Council—how am I…” I flapped my hand between us. “Here? I kind of thought the no-kids thing wasn’t an option.”
He barked a laugh. “Council membership doesn’t castrate us. Neither does our immortality. It’s possible to procreate, merely forbidden. In my defense, I’d been buried behind that veil for far too long. It was not unreasonable for me to go exploring. Not unreasonable for me to find what I did. What and who.” My head was spinning now, but the Hermit pressed on.
“Not even the Magician knew, once I’d realized the truth of what we’d done, your…mother and me. Our silence was the only way to keep you safe, let you grow as a normal child.” He grimaced. “That idea was not as well executed as it could have been. We chose your caretaker poorly.”
I snapped my gaze back to him. “She died trying to take care of me.”
He sighed. “She died trying to be something she was not. Which I should have foreseen, and did not. Her death is my fault. Not yours. Never yours. My role in this world is to see far, and in so doing, I forget that the details of that which is close are every bit as important.”
The Hermit turned and looked out across the room, but I saw what he saw, and I stared too.
The universe spread out before us in a series of layers, each so close to the other that their inhabitants could reach out and touch, if only they could part the veil. That veil hung thickly in some places, but shone like a gossamer wing in others, and was barely more than a web in others. Beyond the veil, the dimensions glistened and beckoned with deceptive beauty—some containing horrors, and others riches untold.
“You have to manage the veil—all of it?” I asked, my awe unfeigned. Awe, and a little anger. “And guard Llyr? That doesn’t sound like such a great plan.”
“I have help,” he said dismissively.
“So now you’re…what? Taking a coffee break?” I couldn’t process him as my father. I wouldn’t. This old man—from the Middle Ages—could not possibly be who he said he was. And yet…
His next words drove the belief home more sharply. “I am here because I grew tired watching you soar to ever higher levels in your abilities, without being able to claim your birthright. I grew weary watching you suffer. I grew angry for the secrets and the lies that I must keep.”
“That’s why I saw you, isn’t it?” I said. “That day…I saw Llyr staring at me through the veil. But it wasn’t Llyr who was searching for me. It was you. It was always you.” I let out a low whistle. “Does the Magician know?”
“He suspected, once you allowed him to touch your mind. But my barriers held. Now, of course, he will know. He was here when you returned. I was here as well. He saw me.”
I turned back toward the reunion in the center of the chapel. “He shouldn’t have come.”
“No.” Willem shook his head. “But he couldn’t help it. And now, in his weakened state, his powers must be dedicated solely to maintaining his façade of strength, especially with the Emperor returned. If there ever was a natural challenger for leadership of the Council, it is Viktor Dal. The Magician cannot let that happen. He will sacrifice much to ensure it does not.”
I nodded, then caught myself. “Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘weakened’? He drank from the Norse cup. We’re done with the whole weak thing, I thought.”
“No.” The Hermit’s words were absolute. “He stopped the bleeding, you could say, by drinking from the horn of Mim. But he did not heal.”
“Well, what was the freaking point—”
“He cannot heal himself. It is one of the drawbacks to his magic, and there are precious few of those. But the Magician is an anomaly. He exists in isolation, he learns in isolation, he performs his many works of magic in isolation. But he cannot heal himself in isolation. It is why he so rarely leaps into the thick of battle, though war was his primary purpose of being in his mortal life. He has learned over time that the battles he would fight end up costing not only him, but those aro
und him if he becomes injured.”
I recalled what Armaeus and even Blue had hinted at. “He sacrificed something, putting Llyr behind the veil a second time.” I swallowed. “A woman?”
“He was betrayed. He suffered much.” The Hermit straightened. “But that isn’t my tale to tell.”
I snapped my gaze back to him. “You’re kidding me, right? You don’t actually expect Armaeus to tell me anything worthwhile? How else am I going to know?” I grimaced as the obvious answer occurred to me. “The Devil.”
“He does have his uses.” The Hermit shook his head, his gaze resting on me gently again. Almost…proudly. It was strange and awkward, and I couldn’t process the emotions I was feeling. I’d never really given much thought to my father. I’d never felt any connection to him, never suspected he’d ever thought of me. Now that made sense, if he spent his life behind the veil, but…
The Hermit’s weathered voice cut across my thoughts. “I think you’ll find that there is not much the Magician would not give you if you asked. Whether that is information or—anything else.” The last words were said with an almost gruff embarrassment. “But you should warn him that he cannot let the actions of his past guide his present. There are some battles he cannot win, some he is not meant to win. His pride does not always counsel the best course.”
The Hermit’s head came up suddenly, a pointer called to the hunt. “I must go,” he said, and there was no sadness to his tone, no dismay.
“Wait, I wanted to—”
But he was already gone. I stood, blinking into the empty space, then turned my gaze to a different horizon, focusing on the veil between the worlds. Sure enough, in the breach where the shadow met the sun, a wildly flying cape slipped out of sight, and a lantern flared to brilliance.
The aching maw of loneliness opened wide once more, but it was different this time. It had a face. A voice. A laugh.
And a name.
I rocked back on my heels, the towel forgotten in my hand.
