“River. River.”
Healing abilities didn’t work on death, and near-fatal injuries needed more time to heal. Time we didn’t have.
The debris rose again, crashing on us like thunder.
18
I closed my eyes and called the book’s power to my hands. Cold light burned my palms, striking the debris with the sound like rippling thunder. Before the tornado could sweep it up again, Lord Colton appeared, hands spread wide, pushing back against the wraith’s tornado-like assault. Holy crap.
River’s eyes opened. He groaned. “The wraith… it’s the central one. The only one using magic…” He coughed, blood wetting his mouth.
“Shit.” I looked desperately at the Mage Lord, but all his attention was on keeping the tornado from hitting us.
“River!” Lady Montgomery ran to us. “The mages’ headquarters is shielded—get him off the battlefield.”
River’s eyes half-opened and he managed to climb to his feet, but pain glazed his eyes, and blood dripped onto the cobblestones.
“Watch my back!” I shouted to Lady Montgomery, letting River lean on me. The blood alarmed me, but he was six feet of solid muscle and there was no way either of us could single-handedly carry him while fighting off the dead. When an undead got too close, Lady Montgomery made liberal use of her curved knife, which she’d soaked in salt. Hazel, Ivy and Morgan had disappeared. Worry twisted in my gut. River… I couldn’t let him die.
Once behind the safety of the wards, Lady Montgomery crouched down beside her son, hands gentle as they examined the wound. Her face was pale, her mouth pinched. “This wound will take several minutes to heal even with his powers. Can you watch him until then?”
“I know which is the real wraith—I have to go into Death to kill it,” I said.
“Then use everything you have,” she said.
I nodded, blinking back tears, and scanned the sky for the wraith. River was right—it appeared more solid than the others, and if I looked closer in the spirit realm, threads of blue Winter magic extended to connect the wraith with the others. One wraith was behind all the magic—and it could only use it in one place at a time. Right now all its attention was on the whirling tornado pushing against the Mage Lord.
I slipped out of my body and rose into the sky, higher, higher. Magic bounced off my shield. Two of the false wraiths closed in and I raised the book, calling on a little of its power, but not too much. Cold light pulsed from my hands, pushing the wraiths back. I focused on my target, and slammed it with all the power I had.
One of the clones disappeared. I kept up the assault, second by second. Every sound below was muted, every emotion locked out, and nothing existed but me and the magic, and the talisman. We didn’t fight one another. There was no struggle. I needed its power and it would bend to my will.
Two more wraith clones disappeared.
My hands trembled on the book. My whole body ached as though I’d pulled more than my spirit here into death. But I wouldn’t break. The book wouldn’t break, and if I wanted to access its full power, I’d be its equal.
One by one, all the clones vanished as the wraith’s magic was pulled back into its body. Readied to attack. I gritted my teeth and braced myself for the impact.
The wraith kept on pulling power, its body glowing blue, the colour of Winter magic and blood. Now, deep in the realm of death, the wraith had solid form. Like a person. No… a Sidhe. My heart climbed into my throat. In his hands appeared the likeness of a blade. A talisman.
No. It can’t have survived beyond death. It had so much magic that it’d managed to manufacture a weapon, while I had nothing but the book.
The wraith moved in a blur, and the blade went through my ghostly form. Magic pulsed from its edges, and I laughed, more in relief than anything. “You can’t hit me with magic even now, wraith. We’re at a stalemate.”
“No, we aren’t,” shouted Ivy. She ran—or floated—wielding her own sword, and stabbed the wraith through the chest. The edges of her blade lit up blue, drawing on power from somewhere close by. The wraith writhed and screamed, its body pulsing with magic, and aimed at Ivy.
Not before I got in the way. I took the hit side-on, the magic dissipating into the air. Ivy’s eyes widened, and the wraith struck again. She stabbed it through the chest, her own blade vibrating with power. Even in the spirit realm, it clearly cost her a great effort to hold onto it. I gathered necromantic power, took careful aim, and struck the creature from behind.
“It’s too solid,” Ivy shouted, her blade wedged in its chest. “And not enough. It’s—stuck.”
“Not for long.” I raised the book, and shouted the banishing words. Pinned by Ivy’s blade, the wraith couldn’t flee.
A wrenching scream tore from its throat. A last explosion of blue magic struck my shield, dissipating as the wraith’s body crumbled to ashes.
Ivy lowered her blade. “You’re immune to faerie magic?”
“I swear I told you that,” I said breathlessly. “Thanks. I have to go. River… he got seriously hurt.”
“I’m sorry.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “One creature did so much damage…”
“I know. Who in hell summoned it? I’d almost say it was a diversion, but they didn’t hit any of the main supernatural hubs.”
Ivy turned around on the spot. The spirit realm was too blurred to see the world beneath—and the air shimmered, showing a familiar path. The Vale.
“The Ley Line’s unstable,” she said. “Really unstable.”
“The summoner!” I said. “Someone did the summoning… it came from above the rooftops.”
“I saw it,” Ivy said. “In the real world, anyway. It was on the building behind where the Mage Lord was. But we’re in the dead part of Faerie.”
I stared at my feet. A transparent silvery line lay beneath, the only light in the grey haze.
“What—the Death Kingdom?” I’d read about the part of Winter territory where the goddess of death resided, but it didn’t sound the same as the void I’d pushed the wraith into.
“Not here,” Ivy said. “This is the path of the dead. It used to lead from the Death Kingdom to the Sidhe’s source of immortality, but now there’s nothing here. It’s close to the place the Vale used to be, before the Sidhe ripped it away.”
I stared along the silvery line. “Seriously? Is this where the gods…?” Had my book come from here? Worry for River beat in my chest, but the silver line shone with a familiar alluring light.
“The gods never walked here,” Ivy said. “Or hell, maybe they did. Do you know how a faerie talisman is usually created?”
“Forged from the heart of a tree and infused with magic,” I said. “Faerie magic, or… gods’ magic. How?”
“The Sidhe ripped the gods’ power out when they were still alive,” Ivy said, a distasteful expression on her face. “Using a ritual and an Invocation. However that book got into your family, no human could have done it.”
“But it’s not the faeries’. It can’t be.”
No Sidhe had wielded this book. I knew it as surely as though the book itself had told me.
“Maybe there is someone with answers,” she said. “Does the book have a name?”
“A name? What, like a summoning?” A suspicion took root inside me. “You met one of the gods? I thought they died.”
“What’s left of it,” she said. “They’re not alive. They died. The talismans are all that’s left of their power, and while it’s kind of conscious, it’s not the same as the real thing, trust me. It can be controlled. I found the one whose magic is in my sword by speaking its name.”
I took the book carefully out. “Can you read this?”
“The symbol?” She frowned at the cover. A syllable left her lips, cold and sharp.
Silence answered. Silence, and a chill breeze.
“Worth a try,” said Ivy. “Don’t say the name in the Courts. The Sidhe have this weird superstition about speaking the names aloud.”
“Like necromancy.” I put the book away in my pocket. How my clothes still existed here, I had no idea. “To summon a person, you have to add their name to the summoning spell. Same with dark magic, Vale magic…”
“Dark magic?” echoed Ivy. “You didn’t. Did you? Tell me you didn’t summon worse than a hellhound.”
“No. Why, is there worse than hellhounds?”
“Yes, but I think you need a different spell for the really nasty sort. Not just the Vale. There are whole dimensions with no life in them… I shouldn’t be giving you ideas.”
“I’m not the sort of person who summons monsters without a plan, don’t worry. Things have a tendency to spin out of control wherever the book’s involved.”
Her mouth quirked. “I can tell I’m going to have my work cut out helping you.”
“Did you just volunteer to train me?” My voice rose in surprise. Not that I didn’t want to work with Ivy, but I’d assumed by default that I was way out of her league as far as possible mentees went.
“Sure,” Ivy said. “There was no one around to explain this shit to me, and I spent ten years running from it. You should get back to River. He seems to really care about you.”
“Yeah, he does.” Wow. Ten years? That’d teach me to make assumptions.
She smiled. “Treasure it. Trust me, there are some things better than all this power.”
The realm of death faded around us, bearing us back to the land of the living.
19
I blinked awake. I was cold again, but not unbearably so. I lay on my back, on a fold-out bed. The room appeared to be an infirmary, and the bustling noises around me and strangers hurrying in and out told me the injured from the battle were being brought in. Not the necromancer guild, but the mages’ headquarters, judging by the wood panelling on the walls. Beside my bed lay the rucksack I’d brought with me containing my spare clothes, which Morgan or Hazel must have fetched from the library. I didn’t see either of them in here.
A loud commotion drew my attention to the corner. Bloodied and injured shifters were restrained and strapped to the hospital beds. Ah. They’re still out of control. Most were wolf or fox shifters, but some were larger, unfamiliar furred animals. Others were partially shifted with their hands or feet wrapped in claws or paws. Anger simmered in the air, almost a kind of magic itself.
I managed to sit upright, my body aching like I’d run a marathon.
“Nice to see you in the land of the living,” said Jas. She and Lloyd sat at another of the fold-out beds—or rather, she half-lay on one of them, while he applied a healing spell to her injured leg.
“You too. I thought you were probably too close to that wraith.” I grabbed the water glass someone had thoughtfully left on my bedside table and downed it.
“No fatal injuries this time, eh, Jas?” Lloyd said.
Jas swatted him in the arm. “Cut it out. People are hurt.”
“Including you,” I said. “How did you fight that wraith? What was the…?” I didn’t know how to explain what I’d seen. The weird shimmering around her spirit that seemed oddly different from the other necromancers.
“The what?” she asked. Her tone, however, suggested the subject was closed—and more to the point, there was no sign of River.
“Nothing. Where’s—?”
‘There.” She pointed feebly over Lloyd’s shoulder at another bed, where River lay unconscious.
Lady Montgomery stood beside him, her gaze catching mine as she realised I was awake. “You killed it?” she asked.
I hurried to her side, the best I could with my legs still shaky. “Banished it. Ivy helped. Is River okay?”
“He’s still healing. The person who summoned the wraith was found dead at the site of the summoning,” Lady Montgomery said. “It seems he was used as a sacrifice in the summoning.”
“Blood magic,” I said, before remembering I’d never actually told her about the times I’d used it in crisis. “Half-faerie?”
A moment passed, in which she gave me an assessing look. “Yes. Your brother has been helping to track potential suspects.”
“Are he and Hazel okay, then?”
“Yes. She’s helping him with the tracking.”
I breathed out. Everyone was safe. Nobody had died. Yet why did I feel like this was a prelude to something worse? If only I knew what was going on in Faerie.
I sat down on the bed again, reaching to squeeze River’s hand. No response. I slipped into the spirit realm. There, I could see the glowing outline of his spirit.
“River?” I reached out and my hand passed right through him. “You scared me.”
“Don’t worry about me.” The glow died down so I could focus on his face. Death’s light made his golden hair look like a halo.
“I couldn’t not worry about you. Why are you here? You can’t be…” I couldn’t say dying.
“I’m checking this realm while my body is resting.”
“How do you do that?” I waved a hand at the spirit realm in general. “You’re sound asleep in the waking world. When I do the same, I start floating off.”
“You haven’t had as much practise,” he said. “I don’t mean skill, I mean spending days or nights wandering this place. You learn how and when to disconnect. But I think the problem with that book is that it pushes you to the brink every time you use it. You burn out.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I reached for his hand, slipping my fingers through his. I concentrated on the sensation, and he felt more solid by the second. At the same time, I became conscious of the book’s presence glowing in my pocket.
The spirit realm changed, showing forested paths, transparent and empty.
He hissed out a breath. “The Vale.”
“The place itself isn’t scary,” I said. “It’s kind of sad. Empty. They made it this way on purpose. Maybe there’s a way to undo the damage. If they can make themselves immortal, they can fix their own realm, right?”
“I don’t think so,” said River. “They have no desire to face their own shameful actions.”
I blinked, then thought back. “Lord Daival?”
“He’s one of the most respected members of the Court. He captured and tortured humans openly and suffered no punishment for it. This is what we’re up against. If we expose the Seelie Queen… I’m not sure even her guilt will be enough.”
“Then I’ll show them this.” I held up the book. “The talisman scared them. It’s all we’ve got. They only understand power.” I quickly told him what Ivy and I had discussed. “Its power isn’t Sidhe—it might not be superior, considering the Sidhe killed and kicked out their gods, but it’s terrifying to them, and that’s enough.”
“The Sidhe kill what scares them. Even death.” His eyes flickered with emotion. “I have faith in you, Ilsa, but the Sidhe—when I was first invited into the Court to claim the talisman my father wished to offer me, I was eighteen, and my head was full of ideas and impressions of the Summer Court and what I could offer it. The Court shattered those illusions within minutes of my arrival.” He took in a breath. “They have no need to desire change, only fear it, and the best we can do is protect ourselves and those we care about from the aftershocks of their selfish decisions.”
“We can do more.” I remembered Ivy’s words, and imagined a shattering cauldron of blood. “They’re not the only ones with magic. And they’ll never be able to do this.” I gripped his half-transparent hand tighter. “You wanted to give them the truth, right? Prove how powerful the Vale is? This is how we do it. Get straight to the Seelie King by any means possible.”
He looked down at our interlocked hands. “We’ll discuss it later. I think I’ve worried my mother enough.”
“You worried me, too.”
“I never thanked you for saving us,” he murmured, his free hand trailing down my arm. I felt the flicker of his touch before it faded, and so did we.
A moment later, I blinked awake in my own body. The shifters’ yowling had q
uietened down, at least, but there were far too many people around for my liking. River sat up and walked to Lady Montgomery, where I took a moment to reorient myself in the land of the living. By now half the hospital beds were empty, witch healing spells having taken care of the worst injuries. The raging shifters had mostly left, too. I got to my feet, looking down at my clothes. Muddy, stained with River’s blood, but I’d suffered no injuries of my own. River’s clothes were in a worse state, shredded and streaked with blood. He looked like he’d been wrestling with the shifters, and had won.
“Is your wound okay?” I asked, as he turned away from Lady Montgomery and walked to me.
“Yes, of course it is. I keep spare clothes at the guild, but my place is closer.”
“Your flat?” I hadn’t seen it, because we’d never even had a proper date. “Can’t you just glamour it off?”
He gave me a tired smile. “Honestly, I’m all out of glamour for a while. Come with me? My shower has warm water.”
“Warm water. Tempting.”
So was he. Without Death clouding my vision, I could see him, clearly as he saw me. Battered, tired, and so damn tempting. Death had come too close to cutting him off from me forever.
I grabbed my rucksack and hurried after him out the doors.
Outside, you wouldn’t have thought a wraith had tried to lay waste to the city. Most of the debris had already gone, while the damaged buildings were surrounded by cloaked figures I thought were necromancers until I got close enough to see them levitating the damaged bricks. Telekinetic mages. Must be a useful power. There wasn’t much River or I could do to help with the clean-up, so we made our way from the mages’ guild to River’s ground-floor flat.
“I still haven’t told my housemates where I’ve been for the last few weeks,” I said, following him inside. The single-room flat was a little small but otherwise cosy. A bookshelf stacked with paperbacks also housed several withered plants, while dust covered everything in a faint layer.
Hereditary Power Page 17
