Shadows & Flame Complete Boxed Set: Demons of Fire and Night Novels

by C. N. Crawford

  Ursula turned her head, her body blazing with heat. A man stood at the top of the steps—another vampire, this one with a faint crown of moonlight blazing from his fair hair. Maybe they weren’t lying about a king, and maybe His Royal Majesty knew where Kester was. The fire in her veins began to dissipate.

  He was taller and older than the other two vamps. He wore a crimson cloak around his shoulders cinched with a golden clasp shaped like an apple, but it was his hair that drew her eye. A blond so pale it was nearly silver, hanging sleekly to his shoulders. His ancient power whispered over her skin, singing of oak groves and dark magic. He looked a lot like the blond vamp standing to her right, only far more powerful. Almost beautiful.

  “Yes father,” said Blondie. “This is the hound.”

  The vamp king arched a black eyebrow. “You can quench your fire, hound. My sons will not kill you.”

  A million questions ran through her mind. “Who are you? What were you doing in Kester’s apartment? Where is Kester? And why am I here?”

  The two younger vamps now flanked the king.

  “I am Mordred, and these are my sons,” said the king vamp.

  Ursula sucked in a sharp breath. “Mordred. From the King Arthur legends?”

  Blondie grimaced at the mention of King Arthur. “My father is the true king of Britain.”

  Mordred cocked his head. “Relax. The hound has no way of knowing that the throne was stolen from me.”

  The three vampires studied her carefully as the Thames washed over the rocky shore. Cold mist rolled off the river bank.

  It was time to get some answers. “And what does this have to do with Kester?”

  Mordred’s tongue flicked over his lips. “We believe Kester may have found the way to Avalon. You will help us find him.”

  Ursula shook her head. “Why should I help you with that?”

  Mordred’s sons aimed their guns at her chest. “Helping us is your only option if you want to live.”

  “I hate to disappoint the true king, but I don’t know anything about the location of Avalon, or where Kester is. I came to London to find him. And I was frankly hoping you might know where he was.”

  “Is that right?” Mordred’s dark eyes bored into her, the air around him darkening with whorls of black. “Well, we’ll see what Agnes has to say about that.”

  Mordred turned to the river, holding out his hands toward the water as he began incanting a spell. The dark water flowed by, reflecting the city lights, then a pale blue sheen glimmered over the surface. Goosebumps rose on Ursula’s arms as the temperature dropped.

  The river’s gentle ripples intensified into waves, until a dark form rose slowly from the water, half-enshrouded in mist. Ursula’s fingers curled into fists behind her back, and she took an involuntary step backward. Slowly, emerging from the foam, rose a crone. Long black hair covered her face, and her skin glowed like moonlight. She wore a tattered cloak over her shoulders, but it was open in the front, exposing drooping breasts, and her skeletal hands were clasped together.

  “You have called upon me, Mordred?” Agnes’s voice gurgled as she spoke. “You know the undead cannot answer the three questions.”

  “I have someone alive who wishes to speak to you.”

  Agnes sniffed the air, through her curtain of hair. “So you do. I smell one of Emerazel’s hounds.”

  Ursula stared at the crone, half-mesmerized. A chill snaked up her spine at the sight of her. Ursula took another step back until one of Mordred’s sons cocked a gun.

  Inch by inch, Agnes glided closer through the fog. When she moved out of the dense mists, Ursula could see that the hag’s cloak was the color of seaweed. Reaching into the shadows of her cloak, Agnes pulled out a faded gray rag. She kneaded the tattered fabric between her gnarled fingers.

  “This blouse belonged to Emmeline. Beaten to death in her kitchen by her lover.” Agnes raised her face, peering at Ursula through the hanks of her hair. Now Ursula could see a glimpse of milky white eyes. “What is your name, dearie?” Something in her voice compelled Ursula to answer.

  “I’m Ursula.”

  “No surname?”

  Ursula shook her head. “That’s all I can remember.”

  Leaning back on her haunches, Agnes wrung the fabric between her hands, and blood dripped from it into the water. Ursula cringed.

  Mordred sidled up to Ursula, and she felt him pull the manacles off her. He leaned in, whispering, “Ask her where Kester is.”

  At last her hands were free—yet she didn’t want to run. She wanted to know where Kester was, too. “Where’s Kester?”

  The crone pushed her hair from her face, and Ursula’s mouth went dry. Her face was marred by a dark hole where her nose should have been. Her milky eyes searched Ursula’s face, and she lowered herself down to her hands and knees, crawling from the water.

  “Kester?” hissed the crone, at the river’s edge. She drew another cloth from her bundle and began kneading it over the rocks. “Kester has gone to the Castle in the Sea.” She stopped working the cloth, looking up at Ursula. “Why did you forsake your betrothed?”

  Ursula shook her head. “I’m going back for him. I can’t help him right now.”

  “He needs you.”

  “I’m going to return. I just—”

  Blondie jabbed Ursula with his elbow. “Ask her if she can be more specific about Kester’s whereabouts.”

  “Where exactly is this Castle in the Sea?” she asked.

  “The entrance rises from the sea of the great horn. Dumnonia. Only the pure may enter.”

  Soldier-vamp stepped forward, holding up a cell phone. His finger brushed the screen. A moment later he announced, “She’s referring to Saint Michael’s Mount. The entrance is there.”

  Mordred smiled, his hand going to the gold clasp at his throat. “Now we have everything we need to reclaim my rightful place as King of the Britons.”

  Something touched Ursula’s knee. She looked down to see Agnes’s hand, the fingers webbed. “Why did you try to kill your father?”

  “I—” It took Ursula a moment to process the implications of the question. Her father? She had no idea who her father had been. In the wisps of memories that curled through her brain like smoke, she’d never remembered a father. An old man, yes, but he’d always seemed more like a grandfather. “I don’t remember. I don’t know why I tried to kill him.”

  “I can see the stain upon your soul,” hissed the crone, rising to her full height. She towered above Ursula, staring down at her through rheumy eyes.

  “I don’t know…” said Ursula. “I don’t remember.”

  Agnes spoke in a gurgling, sing-song voice.

  “The end starts, when magic thickens the air,

  The lost, as if unburied from the soil

  Uncovered from the dankest roots of oaks.”

  The strange words rang in Ursula’s skull like a curse. Agnes was half-crazy, but maybe she had some answers in all her nonsense. The crone’s pointed tongue flicked out, and she licked her lips, then pulled another piece of rag from her cloak—this one dark purple with a gold filigree. She lifted it into the moonlight, squinting at it. “I’d almost forgotten about this one. The betrayed and the betrayer. Met a fate she didn’t deserve.” She knelt again, rubbing it against the river rocks. “You may ask a final question,” she said without looking up.

  Ursula’s mind raced. There was so much she wanted to know. Why had she lost her memory? Why had she tried to kill her father? Were her parents still alive? Where did she come from? The crone rose, turning to the river.

  “Wait!” Ursula almost shouted. Slowly, the crone turned to face her. Ursula drew in a sharp breath. “Where do I come from? What happened to my parents?”

  Agnes’s black hair draped over her shoulders. “I can only answer one. Mount Acidale is where you took your first breath.”

  The words nearly knocked the breath out of Ursula. Mount Acidale? The crone began to slip into the fog, wading into the Th
ames again.

  Ursula’s heart raced, the floodgates opening. Suddenly she wanted to know everything. She needed the answers, now. She ran after Agnes, icy water soaking her boots. “Please. Tell me about my parents. Are they still in Mount Acidale?”

  Foam rose around the crone, and she turned to Ursula a final time.

  “This was your mother’s.” She handed the purple and gold rag to Ursula.

  Ursula gripped the rag in her shaking hands, hardly aware of Agnes slipping beneath the surface of the river again.

  Icy water rushed around her legs as she gaped at the cloth, running her fingers over the fabric, her legs trembling. In the moonlight, she could barely make out the texture of velvet, embroidered with gold-colored thread. Water ran in dark rivulets down between her fingers, and she stiffened when she realized it was blood. Her mother’s blood.

  Ursula’s world tilted, and she stared at the blood on her fingertips. Did this mean her mum was dead? The woman she’d glimpsed in ghostly flashes in her mind, the woman with red hair who wielded a sword like a goddess? Cold sorrow crept over her mind like a dark mist, and yet not a single tear wetted Ursula’s eyes. This was an icy, empty sorrow for a woman she couldn’t remember, whom she must have loved but didn’t know.

  She stared at the sorry rag—the last remnants of her mum. This could be her only connection to her parents. Emptiness gnawed at her chest, and she knelt, dipping the cloth in the freezing river water, and gently rinsed the blood from it.

  When Ursula rose and faced the shore again, she found that only the stony riverbank awaited her. Mordred and his sons had vanished, taking her things with them.

  Chapter 7

  Shivering, Ursula climbed the steps. She crossed the deserted river walkway, gripping the tattered scrap of fabric between her fingers. As she crossed back to the darkened parking lot, a heavy sadness weighed on her chest like a ton of rocks. The parking lot was completely empty, the only noise the wind rustling the leaves.

  In a rubbish bin in the corner of the lot, she fished out a plastic bag and stuffed her mother’s wet rag inside. Water sloshed between her toes as she walked, and she began to seriously regret her decision to run into the river. She hung a left at the end of the dark parking lot, just as thunder rumbled over the horizon and a few fat drops of rain dropped into her skin.

  She turned into a park to her right, not quite sure where she was heading. She had no wallet, no phone—and worst of all, she had no weapons. She’d left her sword back at Kester’s flat, and her reaping pen and kaiken dagger had been in her rucksack. Right now, she had nothing but a sad old rag.

  Mist pooled in the dark park. Normally it might have been a good spot to find some uni students sharing a bottle of merlot, but at this hour, with the rain, she’d be lucky to find a drunk pissing in the bushes.

  Shivering in the rain, she turned onto a road lined with brick buildings. So what had she learned? Kester was possibly in Avalon, and she had no idea how to get there. She’d learned that she had tried to kill her father, a man she couldn’t remember at all, and that her mother was dead, leaving behind only a ragged bit of blood-stained cloth. Ursula’s breath hitched in her throat.

  Dead. The word rolled around her mind like a curse.

  Ursula had sometimes wondered what her mother would look like now. Red hair graying at the temples, maybe—an older version of herself. Even if she’d never had a clear picture in her mind of reuniting with her mother, in the back of her mind, possibility had bloomed like a wildflower. There’d been a possibility of reunion.

  Death certainly changed that, the certainty of it weighing on her chest like a ton of rocks. She’d never felt more alone. Worse, the knowledge that her mother had died, and that she’d tried to kill her father, only confirmed her gnawing suspicions that she had rid herself of her memories because she couldn’t face the truth. What the hell had happened in Mount Acidale—wherever that was? Was it something to do with the dragons hunting her?

  The dark thoughts roiled in her mind and she hardly knew where she was going. She wiped away a tear rolling down her cheek. She needed to find somewhere to stay for the night, and she wasn’t sure she could check into a hotel at this hour. If she could get to a phone… She climbed the dark steps to the pedestrianized bridge, heading north of the river.

  Ursula shivered as she crossed the bridge. Her trousers were sodden and freezing. Summer nights in London were chillier than in New York, and she hadn’t dressed for the chill. Fog drifted off the river, the cool air kissing her skin.

  As she crossed back toward the Thames she reached into the plastic bag, grasping the fabric again. Under the riverside lights, she examined it. It was part of a blouse, really just a sleeve and a ragged chunk of the bodice, made of purple velvet with gold thread embroidered along the sleeve. Given the quality of the silk, it must have been expensive. A lump rose in her throat as she gently rubbed the fabric between her fingers.

  She couldn’t remember this fabric. When she thought of her mother, it was only faint, insubstantial flashes—the red hair, a sword glinting in the sunlight. She couldn’t remember the fabric of her mother’s clothes, or the smell of her skin. Had Ursula once sat on her mother’s lap and rested her head against this bit of dress? Had her mother stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, and pulled her against this purple silk when she was upset? Had her mother worn this fabric, bending over Ursula in bed to tell her stories or sing her lullabies before she fell asleep? She didn’t know. For just an instant, she felt a sharp pang of longing so intense it nearly toppled her.

  Dead. It was the certainty of it that robbed her of her breath.

  As she walked across the bridge that spanned the Thames, Ursula wiped her hot tears on the back of her hand. The death of a possibility, pronounced in the crone’s gurgling river-water voice.

  What else had the woman said? ‘Betrayed and betrayer.’ Something about ‘meeting a fate she didn’t deserve.’ Dread licked up Ursula’s spine. Had her mother been murdered?

  As she descended the bridge’s steps, Ursula’s mind churned. Before the river hag, she’d had nothing to go on. Now, she had a name: Mount Acidale. If she wanted answers about herself, her parents—about why the dragons were after her—that was where she needed to go. Her mind whirled as she walked, roiling with the possibilities of discovery.

  The rain picked up, dampening her hair, and she walked down the narrow lane at the end of the bridge. Most of the shops and restaurants here were closed, and almost no one was around at this time of night. She shivered as she walked, hugging herself. She’d tried to kill her father? She had no memories of him whatsoever. Not even a faint wisp. Was he still alive? And if he was, were they enemies? Maybe she’d fled to London to get away from him.

  She hugged herself, her clothing soaked by the rain. So what were her options now? She could sigil back to Kester’s house, but it had apparently been taken over by vamps. They didn’t take kindly to hellhound intruders. They couldn’t move about in the daylight, so she’d have to wait until morning. Maybe she could get her bag then. For now, she had to find a place to sleep for a few hours. Too bad she had nothing—no wallet, and no phone. Just a rag, covered in her mother’s blood.

  What she needed right now—desperately—was a friend.

  At the end of the street, she caught sight of a sign before the door of a stone building: Studio 67. Ursula hurried toward it. She practically cried with relief when she saw a few people milling under the awning, smoking on the pavement. She walked up to the crowd, clutching the plastic bag tightly in her hand.

  A man in a dark jacket, his hair styled in gelled tufts, took a drag from a rollie.

  Ursula nodded at him as she approached, catching his eye. “All right? My phone’s dead. Do you mind if I borrow yours?”

  “Sure.” Puffing on his cigarette, he pulled a phone from his back pocket.

  She flicked open the cell phone screen, trying to decide whom to call. There weren’t many options. There was her former flatmat
e, Katie, and her ex-boyfriend, Rufus. Considering she’d rather punch herself in the face than speak to Rufus again, that left Katie. On the third ring, Katie picked up.

  “Hello?” Music with a heavy bass pulsed in the background.

  “Katie, it’s… um… It’s…” Ursula paused for a moment. After Ursula had become a hellhound, Emerazel’s agents had told Katie she’d died of a drug overdose. How would she break the news to Katie that this wasn’t actually the case? “It’s Ursula. I’m not dead.”

  Ursula heard a sharp intake of breath. “Ursula? I’ve seen you on the news. What’s all this about the dragons? I thought you was dead for ages. That’s what they told me. I didn’t even know demons was real until a few months ago. Then you’re on the news with the—seriously, what the fuck is going on?”

  “I’m not dead,” Ursula reiterated. “It was… well, it was sort of a conspiracy. Look, you can’t tell anyone I’m here.”

  “All those demon-hunters in America are after you. You know that, right?”

  “I just learned recently. And right now I’m sort of stranded in London.”

  “But I don’t get it. If you was alive, why did you disappear? Why didn’t you ever call me? Seriously, what the fuck, Ursula?”

  “I wanted to call, but I couldn’t. I—look, it’s a long story. Can I meet you somewhere?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m not far from Charing Cross. I’ve lost my cash and—well, everything, to be honest.”

  “Can you walk to District 5? I can keep it open a bit later for you.”

  “You work at Rufus’s bar?” Ursula asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there. Give me time. I’m walking.” She hung up the phone, handing it back to the man in the dark jacket. “Cheers.”

  He waggled an eyebrow at her. “You need anything else, love?”

  Yeah. Just to find my hellhound friend in a mythical city so he can tell me how to defeat an army of dragons. “Nope.”

  Clutching the plastic bag, she picked up her pace, hurrying through the dark city. The closer she moved to Soho, the more people she passed, stumbling around in groups, trying to find night buses.