Shadow Rising (The Shadow World Book 7)

by Dianne Sylvan

  He recited the incantation to awaken the Speaking Stone. It was fairly straightforward, and as he spoke, Stella gestured for Miranda’s hand and picked up the knife. She made a small cut in the Queen’s index finger and held her hand over the bowl.

  Dark, pomegranate-red blood fell into the bowl drop by drop, and as they all watched, the blood and the dittany swirled slowly around each other, gradually combining.

  Stella drew Miranda’s finger down into the bowl and dipped it lightly in the mixture. Then she handed the Queen the Stone, pressing her finger into it.

  “The dreamer calls to the dreamed,” Stella said, her voice clear and calm. “By the blood upon this Stone, hear the words of the Queen of the South, West, Midwest, Mideast, India, and Japan.”

  She gave Miranda a nod this time, and Miranda nodded back, took a deep breath, and said, “Let the priestesses of Elysium hear my call and heed my warning: Your people are in grave danger. The forces of the Order of the Morningstar have set their sights on the Moriastelethia. Help is within your reach; you need only send your location back along this link. We offer shelter and swords in your hour of need.”

  Nico had to smile at how easily she pronounced the name of the amulet without stumbling. She’d been a little clumsy with the Elven tongue at first, mostly because she didn’t know how to adjust to having the whole language in her head out of nowhere and didn’t trust herself, but once she got out of her own way, it was as if she’d been born speaking it.

  Stella ended the message: “Sundered though we may be we are all children of the Lady of Shadow, Mother of Darkness, the Great Queen of Night. By Her will, so shall it be.”

  As she spoke, he felt the Stone absorbing their words, and when she fell silent, it began to pulse just as it had when Kalea had called to him from Avilon.

  Unlike that night, however, this time it glowed brighter and brighter instead of fading. He’d never sent a call using enhanced blood before, so he wasn’t sure if it was behaving normally or not, but the Stone pulsed faster, and brighter, until he and Miranda both had to avert their eyes from the light.

  Suddenly it felt like someone had pulled the drain plug from the room. Nico felt energy rushing out of his body, into Miranda’s, into the Stone, and out. The Queen gasped, panicking at the unexpected drain—she groped after the energy out of instinct, trying to stop it, but before Nico could warn her against it she realized her mistake and jerked backward so hard she literally toppled backward in her chair. The Speaking Stone fell from her hand and Stella snatched it out of the air.

  Nico caught Miranda with one hand, though the chair clattered to the ground, sending Jean Grey tearing for the closet in a blur of fur and claws. He had to twist at an awkward angle to avoid dropping the Queen, but he managed to lower her to the floor without injury.

  Meanwhile Stella added an extra push to the spell’s energy to overcome any errant currents Miranda had created, and the energy whooshed out of the room, the Stone’s pulsation hitting a crescendo and then fading out in a matter of seconds.

  He looked down at Miranda.

  “Did I fuck it up?” she asked, embarrassed.

  “Nope,” Stella said. “It went. Now we wait.”

  “Oh, good,” Miranda said, and passed out.

  Stella looked over at the Queen. “What was that about?”

  Nico sighed. “I wish I’d known the energy pull would be so strong—I would have warned her. Such things tend to send her and David both into a panic.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what happens when you are Bondbroken,” he replied. “The severance causes all the life energy to be sucked out of you forcibly until you are dead. It is an agony unlike any other. David will not admit it but he has nightmares about his own death, and I have never seen such fear on his face. It’s easier when they know to expect it, but when it’s sudden…”

  “God,” Stella muttered. “I didn’t know…I mean, I did…I was there after it happened. Shit, it should have occurred to me too. It seems like it was so long ago, but for you guys it’s just a moment.”

  “Add to that, the last two times she has done any serious magical work were to save Deven and to save me—both times were traumatic, though at least the last one ended well. She is terrified of what Weaving might do to her and to us, but she keeps trying because she knows she must.” He brushed curls from the Queen’s face, smiling down at her admiringly. “She is working on a way to approach the Web using music, to get past that fear.”

  Stella snuffed the central candle and got up, righting the chair and moving it away so they could get the Queen up off the floor. The Witch squeezed Miranda’s shoulder, and on impulse leaned down and kissed her forehead. Nico understood. They both knew a great many remarkable people, especially here at the Haven…but there was no one like the Queen. Stella sometimes forgot that her friend, who giggled with her over penis jokes and ate ice cream from the carton, was such a formidable creature.

  “I will take her to bed,” Nico said, and at Stella’s raised eyebrow clarified, “To her own bed to sleep, silly woman.” He took the Stone and tucked it in his pocket. “I will see that she keeps this until we get a reply.”

  Stella looked relieved to have the Stone out of her hands. “Good idea. I think I’m going to take a long hot bath and go to bed early with some of those nice pills Mo gave me. They keep me from dreaming so much.”

  He rose, leaned down, and kissed her. “Be kind to yourself, lovely one. I shall be here at a thought if you need me.”

  He wasn’t entirely happy leaving her alone, but Stella wasn’t the sort to stiff-upper-lip her way through suffering; if she needed company or help she would ask for it. He was thankful for that, as it helped simplify at least one of his relationships. Luckily since they had always been, as the humans said, “friends with benefits” more than a couple, she didn’t begrudge him time with the others. From the beginning he’d been attached to at least one other person, even if that person had refused to acknowledge his existence for the first two years of their bond.

  He carefully lifted the Queen up off the floor. She murmured something and burrowed into his shoulder. He chuckled.

  “Good night, my lady Witch,” he told Stella. “Sleep well.”

  She gave him a knowing grin as he left.

  He thought about Misting to the Suite, but given how sensitive she was to Misting he opted just to walk and avoid waking her. She was hardly a burden, though she took up so much energetic space—she, like Deven, was a cosmic event contained within a small body.

  The guard at the Suite door bowed and opened it for him; he nodded and carried the slumbering Queen to her bed.

  Esther had obviously been in: the fire was dancing, the room uncluttered, the bed turned down. He placed the Speaking Stone on the bedside table and tucked Miranda in, and was sure he’d managed it without waking her until her eyes blinked open.

  “Stay,” she said blearily. “Just for a little while?”

  “Of course,” he replied. She moved off to the side and held open the covers so he could climb in next to her and she could resume her position against his shoulder.

  He wasn’t particularly sleepy, but the power of her weariness was difficult to resist, particularly in combination with the world’s most comfortable bed and the lingering scents of all four of them in one of the few places they all felt safe. Miranda herself smelled like whatever botanical concoction she used to keep her hair from running amok, along with the almond-scented body wash she and the Prime both favored, with an undertone of spicy sweetness, like honeyed cinnamon. It was an apt description for her voice as much as her skin.

  Plus, falling asleep kept him from focusing too much on how wonderful it felt to have such delicious curves pressed against him—he had always been quite pleased to take lovers of whatever gender, but Elven women had never been anything like the ones he’d encountered here at the Haven. Stella was softer, as the Queen packed a good deal of muscle under her petite frame, but bo
th were damn near irresistible…and he had seen the way she moved with a lover, almost serpentine, hips rolling like the tide. Lucky for the current state of their friendship Miranda was asleep or he might not be able to talk himself out of making an overture and probably embarrassing himself…

  A small, strong hand slid up his arm, fingers nimbly sneaking under the collar of his shirt. Her nails scratched lightly over his skin, sending a shiver through him, and a moment later he felt the hot softness of lips on his neck, and had to fight not to groan aloud.

  He smiled. “Are you asleep?”

  The murmured reply might have been “No,” or a laugh, or something else entirely—he couldn’t make out any actual words. But as she shifted her body onto his, her hands moving down to work his shirt up over his head, he was disinclined to inquire further…it would be so incredibly easy just to lie back and enjoy it, and his body was definitely on board with that idea…still, if she was asleep it would hardly be ethical to let her continue.

  To his surprise, she lifted her head and looked down into his face—sleepy, yes, but definitely awake. A tendril of her hair fell down onto his forehead, and another joined it. He reached up and let one twine around his fingers, then touched her face, questioning.

  “Is this okay?” she asked, voice a bit husky, making him shiver again.

  “Oh yes,” he managed. “Very.”

  Neither spoke again for quite a while.

  *****

  “Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”

  Deven looked over at David, simultaneously following David’s psychic nudge along the Tetrad bond. Sure enough, he could sense Miranda and Nico were together, and things were getting a bit…unplatonic. “I’ll be damned,” he said, a little surprised. “I think they may be.”

  The Prime grinned. “Good for them.”

  Deven had to laugh at his enthusiasm. “You’re incorrigible,” he said. “And you have a lousy grasp on the concept of Date Night if this is your idea of romance.”

  “This from you,” David answered with a laugh of his own. “I seem to recall your idea of a romantic evening out was armed combat followed by five or six hours of violent sex with as little conversation as possible.”

  “Don’t forget the alcohol,” Dev reminded him. “There was always alcohol.”

  David shook his head in mock aggravation and gestured for him to follow.

  The Mueller Fine Art Museum was small, and not as widely patronized as other museums in town, but it played host to many traveling exhibits from all over the world; Deven had been there once, a year ago, for a showing of Tibetan Buddhist icons. He had no idea what the current exhibit was until he saw a banner stretched across the front of the entrance:

  Ink and Faith: The Irish Dominican Order pre 1500 CE.

  What the hell…

  David saw him balk, but said, “I just want you to see one thing. Five minutes. It’ll be worth it.”

  Deven took a deep breath and followed him along the corridor to the main hall, where instead of paintings and sculptures, there were glass cases in a long row. About two dozen people meandered from one to another, conversing in low voices.

  At the far end of the room a fountain lent a peaceful soundtrack. Thankfully they hadn’t gone for monastic chanting or anything so cliché.

  David led him to the very last case and stood to the side so he could look in.

  “I came last week out of curiosity,” the Prime said quietly. “I wondered if there was anything remaining from the monastery where you lived. Imagine my surprise when I saw that.”

  Deven peered down into the case.

  His own artwork peered back at him.

  It was a single vellum sheet of illuminated Latin—from Psalm 148, honoring God in the natural world. The careful writing was surrounded by intricate drawings of animals, a forest, a river; and inside the large capital P, a white hound leapt from a moonlit scene toward the morning sun.

  That exact animal, in a much more practiced and elegant design, had been etched into Dev’s skin for well over four hundred years.

  The plaque beside the page read, “Illuminated Biblical Passage, Psalms 148:7-12, circa 1260-1280. Artist unknown. The monastery at St. Alban’s (just south of the city now known as Dublin) was one of the first to fall prey to the Inquisitorial hysteria of the era; by 1300 more than 70% of the monks there had been tortured to death or executed for heresy. Few artifacts of St. Alban’s remain, but this page survived to be passed down through private collectors until it was donated to the exhibit by an unknown benefactor.”

  He stared at it in silence for a long moment, and could sense his lack of reaction was making David uneasy.

  “Is…are you all right?” the Prime finally asked. “Was this a bad idea? I just thought you’d want to know something you made lasted as long as you have.”

  Deven lifted his eyes to David’s and smiled a little. “I was sixteen,” he said. “It took weeks, bent over squinting in the candlelight.” He pointed at a tiny splotch of ink along the bottom border that had been partially hidden with now-flaked gold leaf. “Right there…I fell asleep sitting up and knocked the inkwell over with my arm, but…someone caught it, and it only spilled a few drops.”

  Kind hazel eyes, shy and serious. “Go to bed, Brother. The Psalms will still be here in the morning.”

  A hand offered the inkwell. Their fingers touched.

  “Thank you, Brother Senchan.”

  A wave of dizziness broke through Dev’s composure, and he actually sagged back a step—David was behind him in an instant, both keeping him upright and shielding them from view. Genuinely alarmed, David took him by the arms and drew him over to a bench by the fountain.

  “I’m an idiot,” David muttered. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  But Deven shook his head, swallowing what was either a sob or a laugh—there was no way to know without letting it out, and he didn’t want to startle the humans.

  “Senchan,” Deven said, the name coming out on a hoarse breath. “Oh my God.”

  David’s obvious worry was almost funny—he never looked worried in public. “What?”

  It was definitely a laugh. Deven felt it pushing outward from his chest, and had to ground himself fiercely to stop its hysterical emergence. “The boy,” he said. Of course that brought no more recognition than the name itself, so he clarified, “My first.”

  “The one who ratted you out to the Inquisition?”

  “Yes.” Deven pushed himself up off the bench and back over to the case, staring at the words and the ornaments, the border of knotwork that had given him hand cramps for days. There were well over a dozen symbols that would have been considered heretical by the Inquisitors, who had been imported from Spain; but at that time, the old ways were still being assimilated by the Church, Pagan festivals clothed in Catholic words. They must not have known he did this page, if they didn’t use it as evidence against him.

  In the upper right corner of the design he’d drawn a raven…he didn’t remember doing that. They were an ill omen to his people, back then. A harbinger of death.

  “What happened to him?” David asked softly. “Senchan.”

  Deven let out a breath he hadn’t intended to hold. “I don’t know,” he replied. “They killed him, but I don’t know how. Probably burned. They threw faggots in with the rest of the firewood back then.”

  It wasn’t as if that was news to David, but he still looked stricken at the matter-of-fact way Deven said it. “Come on,” David told him, taking his arm. “We should go. I’m sorry I brought you here.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Deven said as the Prime pulled him out the museum’s front entrance and into the frigid night. “I’ve been trying to remember his name for years. I couldn’t. Do you know what that’s like, forgetting someone who for better or worse changed everything? There are great swaths of history I lived through but can’t remember a moment of. Some of it I drugged away, but most of it just…fades. After a while
you become a ghost to yourself, just a phantom walking the world with nothing to hold you to the surface of the earth but gravity and skin.”

  David had grown still, and was listening to him with at least a semblance of understanding; he was only half Deven’s age, but 350 years was still a long time. Even the youngest vampire understood time differently than a human.

  “I forgot my father’s name,” Deven went on. “It came back to me not long ago, but for years it was lost. My mother’s gone, dead most likely now or worse, but her memory still exists in the world because of the Elves. My father, that boy—if I don’t remember them they no longer exist. And I couldn’t. Until now.” He smiled, taking hold of both of David’s hands. “Thank you for giving that back to me.”

  Slowly, David smiled, relieved. He nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  They smiled at each other for a minute before David added, “There’s one other thing I wanted to do tonight, if you’re amenable…something I’ve been wanting to do since 1942.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  David’s smile turned mischievous, and he pulled Deven into his arms, spun him around, and kissed him, right there in the middle of the sidewalk in downtown Austin, as cars rushed by and humans hurried to get in out of the cold, and the first few flakes of a rare midwinter snowfall tumbled down from the darkened sky.

  *****

  Miranda woke slowly, reluctant to let go of sleep but so comfortable and relaxed she didn’t want to miss being awake either. She could sense morning had come and gone, and it was somewhere near noon, but she couldn’t feel the sun as strongly as usual this time of day—it must be overcast, even raining. Distantly she could hear a soft hissing sound…snow?

  It snowed perhaps once every three or four years in this part of Texas. She remembered how, when she was a kid, she’d wake her mother up at four in the morning and drag her to the window to show her—then she’d put on every piece of outerwear she had and stumble out into the bracing cold to gather up scant handfuls of white and build a ten-inch-tall snowman on the picnic table in the back yard.