With an easy twist of power, Drakkina funneled into a thin ribbon and snaked against the crucial thread of time. When she opened her eyes she hovered in a cross-legged position above the slab in the Julian calendar year 1893 AD.
“Come to me,” she called, her voice startling the real dragonflies in the meadow that had been drawn to her energy. She touched the objects lying on the slab before her: a blue feather, a tuft of fur, a yellow butterfly wing, and an owl feather. “Come, my friends.”
Wind rattled through the leaves outside the circle. She scanned the sky for dark funnel clouds but saw only blue. Drakkina relaxed. The leaves settled, and a mass of yellow butterflies fluttered into the stone circle. A blue bird dipped and dodged through the curtain of yellow, chirping a greeting. Drakkina nodded to Chiriklò. A slight quiver of the blue wildflowers marked the passage of a fluffy, brown mischief-maker.
“Bela,” Drakkina said and stepped off to help Merewin’s animal protector. But as soon as her imagined foot touched the grass, a silent shape swooped down, grabbing the scruff of the little brown mink.
Kailin’s owl, Tuto, dropped the squirming animal a mere inch from the top of the slab. Could the mink sense there was no real danger from the bird of prey? Bela leapt for Drakkina, jumping on her lap only to sit on the slab in the mist of Drakkina’s ethereal image.
Drakkina smiled at Chiriklò, as he flitted to land on the opposite end from Tuto with Bela and Drakkina in the middle. Kat’s butterflies alit sporadically along the granite.
“Thank you for coming,” Drakkina said. “The final battle looms close. The Earth Mother warns that if the battle starts in a different time, the results will be complete devastation for the world. You must alert your mistresses and their mates. I will call upon them soon to come to the stones, and they must arrive ready to fight with all the power they possess.”
Drakkina turned to stare into the golden eyes of Tuto. “Jackson Black must gift me the Orb of Life before the final battle. I will join it to my amulet. The union will be a power source the demons do not possess.” She touched the amulet that lay against her chest.
Tuto spread his wings wide and cocked his head. Drakkina frowned. “If he won’t, we will fail. His wife and children will likely die. Tell him that,” she said.
She shook her head. “And tell them all that they must do as I say as I’ve seen the prophecies.” Gilla’s daughters were stubborn. “Tell them—”
Drakkina cut off as the bramble hedge outside the stones shook, and a large wolf broke through. Drustan’s animal, Tenebris, trotted into the circle. Tuto screeched and flapped his massive wingspan. Dirt swirled with him on the small gusts as he lifted to perch on a tree branch. Serena’s blue bird darted to a tall pine while the butterflies scattered into the breeze. Bela, the mink, squeaked where she was, not sure where to hide, and probably wishing for wings. Drakkina fought the urge to float upward, and continued to use her ethereal form as some protection for Merewin’s animal.
The wolf stopped, its yellow eyes focused on Drakkina.
Beware. He comes.
“When?” she asked.
“Now,” came a deep voice from the forest.
****
With a wide, unconcerned stride, Drustan waded through the yellow and blue flowers growing inside the great stone circle. He studied the witch sitting on the sacred altar, her false body nearly fading. Just like his brethren, she pretended that her earthly body still existed. Did she remain to protect the little mammal running around under her form? How unlike the selfish crone.
“Be gone, witch,” he said. “I have need of this place.”
“This place is sacred to the Earth Mother,” she replied.
Drustan let a wry grin curve his lips as he surveyed the slippery spirit, anger tightening his gut. “I plan no defilement today. Or do you wish to battle now?”
“You would lose. You are alone.”
His smile died away as the hollow in his chest echoed with his words. “I am never alone.” The twelve demons and warlock whom the witch had bound together thousands of years ago were always close. As a lonely, ostracized child, they were his only companions, his surrogate family. Even now that he was grown, they spoke to him across times, across leagues, urging and whispering to him, preparing him for his destiny as the Earth’s new leader.
His wolf and only corporeal companion, Tenebris, looked toward the trees, alerting Drustan of the two people he’d asked to meet him.
“Leave now, witch, else see how powerful I’ve become since you last tried to kill me as a baby.” He glanced at the owl in the tree. “Tuto, take your friend to safety.” The owl swooped down to fly through Drakkina’s misty form, and grabbed the mink from the slab. The witch gasped at the impact and dissolved.
His sisters’ animals flew toward the west where hopefully the witch would thread them back to their own times. He raked fingers across the fur on his friend’s head as he walked past the wolf toward the solid stone altar.
Coming, Tenebris thought. Almost here.
Resting his hands atop the stone, Drustan closed his eyes. The magic that sat like a flaming rock in his chest grew within him, bending and transforming the wavelengths of light around his body. His six-foot, four-inch height seemed to shrink, his broad shoulders hunching forward, his skin growing slack and wrinkled with age. Even his britches, tunic, and leather vest changed to the weathered frock and cloak of the old woman whom he mimicked.
They are here, Tenebris thought and jogged off into the woods opposite the visitors.
Footsteps scuffed in the pebbles. “Wise woman? I have brought my son.” The voice rose above the frantic beating of the young mother’s heart.
He shifted his weight side to side, turning as if he were truly an old woman. “Bring the boy,” he said, sculpting his voice to match his appearance. He pointed a gnarled finger at the stone slab. “Lay him here.”
The mother lifted the boy into her arms. He looked to be about eight years old, his arms and legs bony, his face gaunt. The mother gently lowered him to the stone altar where Drustan could easily assess the swelling of the boy’s stomach and pelvis. The boy watched Drustan with a tentative smile. His soft eyes held hope.
“God bless ye,” the mother said and blinked back tears, “for seeing Ephraim. He is a good boy. We have prayed and tried every medicine available. Nothing helps. Now people are afraid to even touch him, afraid they will catch his cancer. Please.”
Drustan shooed the mother back from the slab. “Give me room,” he said. Drustan wouldn’t risk a careless touch or he would do more harm than good. He had heard whisperings of the doomed boy in the remote village he visited occasionally for news of the world outside his forest home. The mother spoke the truth. People considered Ephraim already dead and best left alone. Drustan couldn’t abide loneliness in a child. The reminder of his own upbringing made his gut churn with anger.
“I will do what I can,” he said. The mother skittered around to the other side and fussed over the boy’s comfort on the hard rock, smoothing a hand down his face and kissing his forehead. Ephraim’s hair had been cut short, probably one of the efforts to rid the body of the disease. She held his little hand.
“These are herbs from a distant land,” Drustan said and placed a small leather bag on the slab. “For you, to give the boy after I help him.” She nodded and took up the bag. “Steep the herbs in boiling water, one at a time, and give them to him to drink.”
Drustan stared hard at the mother. “Ephraim will become very sick after I treat him today. In his stomach. He might vomit. You must keep him drinking the decoctions, especially the ginger root.”
She nodded even though her eyes grew watery. Drustan continued. “His hair will fall out, even his eyelashes and brows, his nails will darken, and he will be tired.”
“Will it help him get rid of the cancer, though?” she asked. The boy’s small Adam’s apple bobbed in his distended throat.
With the slightest push of extra magic, Drustan m
ade his gaze split so that both the mother and the boy saw his direct, unbending stare. “Yes,” he said, willing them to have faith. Faith would keep the boy going even when he felt like death. If the child could hold on, he would live. Drustan had helped a woman in Edinburgh just last month with a similar affliction. Growths had spread throughout her body, pressing on her lungs and making it hard to breathe.
In healthy people, Drustan’s touch brought sickness and death, but to the diseased, if he focused his touch on the cancer, the growths would wither under his magic. It was a tricky process. He had to concentrate, hone in on the vigorous activity of the quickly dividing cells. Unfortunately, hair came from fast growing cells and would be a necessary casualty of the war he was about to wage throughout the lad’s body.
“Will it hurt?” the boy asked.
Drustan ignored the ache of guilt in his stiff shoulders, a talent he’d perfected over his mortal lifetime. He’d hurt people before and despite Semiazaz’s constant approval, he abhorred it. “Not more than you’ve already endured.”
The boy paled. Apparently he’d been through a lot. “Courage,” Drustan said. “You apparently are a survivor.”
“I’m afraid,” Ephraim whispered. “I have no courage.” His mother let tears run down her cheeks as she held the boy’s hand.
Drustan shook his head. “You came to this circle, lad. That is courage.” The boy blinked, discounting his words, so Drustan continued. “Fear lurks in the bravest of warriors. Courage is doing what is right on the outside even when you are screaming on the inside.” He waited for the boy’s nod.
Drustan’s gaze snapped to the mother. “Step back.” She let go of Ephraim’s hand. “My magic is powerful and will harm you if you interfere.” She nodded, eyes like full moons.
Standing before the boy, he touched the child only with his finely-tuned senses in order to detect the most concentrated areas of disease in the little body. Ephraim’s neck swelled with disease and his swollen belly swam with cancerous fluid.
Eyes closed and magic focused, he listened to the movement of blood through the boy’s body, feeling his sluggish heart under the strain, smelling the sweet stench of disease on a minute level, undetectable by ordinary humans.
For a moment, he let the glamour around his hands slip away, his fingers elongating into a strong grip. He ignored the mother’s gasp and touched one hand to Ephraim’s neck and one over his stomach. The boy hissed through his teeth, a sucking in that accompanied pain, necessary pain.
The living coal inside Drustan flared up and funneled down through his arms and into the boy. He navigated its power past the healthy cells, but let his dark power glob onto the quickly multiplying cells throughout. The boy’s breathing increased into rapid pants. The mother reached out.
“Don’t touch him,” Drustan said deeply, his unaltered words ringing in her ears and in her mind. He’d paralyze her if need be. If she touched either him or her son right now, her own cells would take on the taint. And Ephraim must have his mother to care for him while he healed.
Drustan worked fast, forcing his magic through the boy, coating the cancer cells with his evil power, discovering and shriveling each bit of disease. The boy had cancer along every limb, in most major organs. He’d have died within weeks.
As suddenly as he’d started, Drustan disengaged, yanking his hands back. He’d hit every part of Ephraim, killing every fast growing cell he could locate. To stay attached any longer would only harm normal tissue.
The boy looked like wet, swollen bread on the stone, his eyes half open. He breathed heavily while the mother sobbed.
“You may help him now,” Drustan murmured. The drain from controlling his magic made him lean against the altar, farther down and away from where the mother collapsed across her boy.
“Will he be well?” she asked, looking toward Drustan.
He nodded and hoped he wasn’t lying. “The disease is dead, but now his body must heal. Remember the herbs. It will take several weeks for him to grow strong. Keep him away from others who are ill until the next moon cycle is finished.”
As she lifted Ephraim’s back into a sitting position, the boy’s shorn hair scattered about his shoulders. The wind caught at the remaining strands, tugging them loose. The mother tried to hold the hair to his head, but it came off in her hand, a gruesome web of hair between her fingers.
“It will grow back,” Drustan said. “Take him home. Give him the herbs. Let him rest.”
The mother slid Ephraim from the slab. She struggled to carry him to the perimeter of the circle. It must have taken them half the day to walk to the sacred stones, and they had no mount. The boy could not walk that far.
Tenebris, he called, and the wolf loped into the path before the mother. A small scream left her and she lifted the boy into her arms, turning back toward the stones.
Drustan held out a hand to the wolf. “He is my friend and will carry the boy.”
The mother shook her head, her mouth agape over Ephraim’s bare head.
A mother must sacrifice her fear to save her children, Drustan said within the woman’s head. He pierced her with a questioning glance. Drustan could hear the constant ramble of prayers playing through her mind, but she remained still as Tenebris approached.
“Lay the child on the creature’s back,” Drustan instructed and the mother complied, keeping her hand on her son to make certain he didn’t roll off.
Take them home. Avoid others, Drustan instructed. His wolf walked briskly from the circle, the mother nearly trotting to keep up.
Exhausted, he let his glamour slip away and slumped forward. The grasses and flowers lay dried and withered where he’d stood during the focused poisoning, a patch of death under his feet. How appropriate. He cursed softly and sat upon the stone table. Keeping such control of his powers wore on him. Semiazaz promised that when Drustan ruled the world, he could let go of his restraints, being all he wished to be. Unfortunately, all Drustan wished to be was…powerless.
His power destroyed everything he touched. Only Tenebris could withstand it, a gift from his long-ago birth mother. Semiazaz and his brethren had no corporeal bodies. So even the Egyptian, cat-like demon, Bast, couldn’t touch Drustan in the scandalous way she whispered she would. She inhabited a human once when Drustan was a young man, sacrificing the girl by sliding her body along him while he slept, seducing him in his sleep. When he’d awakened to find the naked woman straddling him, he’d loved her well, her cries of pleasure a balm against his loneliness. But in the morning, when Bast left her form, taking her demon strength with her… He didn’t even know the woman’s name.
Drustan stretched upon the altar to lie in the spot where the boy had suffered. Strands of Ephraim’s hair clung to the rock. He caught a piece between his fingers. The boy would live because of his damnable magic. Could his little life make up for all those Drustan had taken?
The sun broke through the clouds above, a ray warming his bared arms as he spread them behind his head. He let his thoughts drift, knowing what island they would move toward. The girl in his dreams, the one very different from sexual Bast, the one who was pure and good, her smile gentle yet her words firm. Wide set eyes, pert nose, full pink lips. She’d dwelled in his consciousness most of his life. Before he learned to block out Semiazaz’s prying, the wizard had seen her in Drustan’s mind and said he’d find her for his adopted son. But to what end? He couldn’t touch her. Drustan had refused the offer and learned to shield his thoughts.
He dozed for long minutes, perhaps hours. He didn’t care about time. He sighed and listened to the breeze in the trees and the small creatures scurrying off. Drustan tuned them out, turning inward to the vision that loosened the tightness he kept in his gut. The vision smiled behind his closed lids. He even conjured the whisper of her voice.
“Hello?” she said, even though she only smiled in his mind’s eye.
Eyes closed, he turned his head toward the sound.
“Oh, you’re awake. I didn
’t mean to disturb you.”
The voice was English, cultured. That was new. He blinked against the rays of the descending sun radiating out from behind the woman, casting her in shadow with an aura of gold. He squinted and rose onto his elbows. She appeared as an angel. Any moment he expected to see her golden wings emerge, lifting her away from him. For an angel would never sink low enough to touch a devil like him.
Instead, a gusty breeze tugged at a loose bun high up on her head. Wisps of tawny-brown hair curled around her jawline. It reminded him of strands of light caramel candy he’d once sampled.
“Are you well?” the woman asked, and Drustan pushed up to sit. “You are flushed.” She reached forward and touched his forehead. Drustan yanked away from her hand, watching.
She jumped. “Forgive me. Habit. I am a medical doctor,” she said, her words tinged with defensiveness.
She had touched him, her palm against his skin. He’d felt it, the coolness of her hand. The firm pressure. And yet she stood there, straight and well instead of crumpled at the base of the stone slab.
Impossible, unless this was just another dream after all. He exhaled long. Just a dream. It was better this way.
“Can you speak?” she asked and pointed to her ear.
He tried to reach into her mind with his power, but her mind was blank to him. Strange. Usually he had all his waking powers in dreams, except for the poison in his touch.
Who are you? He thought and took her hand.
“Let go,” she said and twisted it, her cheeks growing pink.
“Who are you?” he said out loud.
She startled at the sound of his voice. “Anna Pemberlin.”
And now she even had a name. Could this be a premonition? He studied her, sketching the details in his memory. Long lashes around large green-tinged eyes that glanced about the circle as if looking for assistance. She was as beautiful as ever, and not sad in this dream. In fact, she looked outraged and strong. And very kissable.
“You have something in your hair,” he said, eyeing the gold splashes amongst the warm brown. Still tethered to him, she swatted at her head with her other hand.
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