L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set

by R. S. Collins

We would never have peace again.

  Likely, human witches—and in time, humans themselves—wouldn’t even survive.

  Focus, I told myself, just like I would have told Bren.

  Bren.

  “What have you done with Bren?” I shouted at Alderon.

  “What do you think?” He nodded to the tornado, which was gaining in size, pushing toward us. “I killed him.”

  Pain lanced my chest, bringing instant tears. “I don’t believe you, you lying bastard. If he’s dead, show me the body!”

  “In due time.” Alderon drew his own sword. It flashed a blinding white-silver, laced about the edges with Nire’s all-too-familiar purple. “First, I’m going to cut out your heart. It’ll help me with a few potions I’m brewing.”

  With that, he charged toward me.

  I met his downswing with a two-fisted upswing of my own, pulling on everything Rol had ever taught me from the time I was a small child.

  Purple lightning crackled around gold fire. My teeth slammed together. Both my arms went numb. I staggered, but so did Alderon. As he wheeled on me, he looked a little surprised.

  “You never were much with a sword,” he growled, lifting his blade again.

  “Things change.” I lifted Bren’s.

  We circled each other, step for step, pacing, searching for any weakness in stance or strategy. I tried to think like Bren, see the situation through his sharp eyes.

  Alderon was bigger, but I was faster.

  He was stronger, but I was smarter.

  He was insane and evil. I was determined and pissed.

  Purple sparks fired from his sword.

  Gold sparks fired from mine.

  They met each other and canceled with a flash, dropping away to ash and nothing.

  “Don’t think to fight me with magic,” I goaded. “You know better.”

  Alderon snarled and lunged at me. Impulsive. Unbalanced.

  I parried him easily, turning him, almost ripping his tainted blade from his hands.

  That’s my girl, I imagined Bren saying. Kick his ass.

  Had I ever been afraid of Alderon? Of the Shadows? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember being scared of anything at all.

  Alderon surprised me with a quick feint, drawing his blade across the arm where the Shadow had once attacked me.

  Cursing, I spun away, but the damage was done. The wound opened and bled freely, and I felt the cold of Shadow poisons trickling into my flesh. Alderon’s blade was as deadly as any viper, and maybe more so.

  I muttered a spell, doing what I could to bind the damage and slow its progress. I would die again, but that was okay. Been there, done that, as Bren would say. Death didn’t scare me anymore. Besides, I had the satisfaction of knowing I was taking this murderous idiot with me.

  Sweat broke across my forehead. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. Weakness spread through my limbs at an alarming rate.

  “Do you like the feel of the grave, witch?” Alderon feinted, then withdrew, laughing when I flinched. Still, I kept my eyes on him, watching his patterns, his rhythms. I had more of Bren in my mind and heart than I realized.

  “It’s cold, yes?” Alderon feinted again.

  I slashed down hard, cutting him from shoulder to waist.

  He swore and leaped backward. A line of blood welled outward, staining red against the brown filth of his tunic.

  “Very cold,” I agreed. My teeth chattered. “You’ll know soon enough.”

  Pointing my sword, I sent a shower of energy into the wound I had opened. He parried with a volley of purple sparks, but some of my gold won through. I saw it strike him, saw him bend and twist from the spelled pain and instant weakness. My energy was as poisonous to him as his was to me.

  He roared and came at me again, seemingly in slow motion. I could see it in his face, in those hateful, wicked blue eyes. His arrogance wouldn’t let him believe I could win this fight. He couldn’t fathom that I wouldn’t yield to his onslaught.

  Up went his fearsome purple blade. He intended to take off my head with one powerful blow.

  I kept my approach simpler.

  With a roar of my own, I used all of my strength to ram Bren’s blade right into Alderon’s vulnerable gut. At the same time, I threw the force of my magic into the steel.

  Gold fire spread up, up, up, and out, turning Alderon bright from the inside out.

  Sparks shot from his eyes, his ears, his open mouth.

  His own energy came rushing out like a white and purple cloud of rabid bats, swirling around the two of us. From the hilt of my sword to the tip of his still-raised blade, it crackled and sparked, moving between us. I felt a cold-beyond-cold plunge into my very essence. It tore at my heart, clawing at the life, the beat, the force that made me who I was.

  Instead of fighting, of being afraid, I drew it in, just as I had drawn Alderon into his fatal charge. His magic couldn’t hurt me. It couldn’t take anything away from me. I knew this as sure as I knew my own name.

  “I am Jasmina Corey, Queen of the Witches!” I shoved my sword deeper, all the way through the vermin who had thought to take something from me he could never understand. “This is my magic. My heart. My home! In the name of the Goddess, in the name of truth and love, I cast you out!”

  The husk that had been Alderon shattered like an image in a smoky mirror, falling away from my blade.

  His sword, still flaring purple, tumbled toward my head.

  I caught it easily with my free hand and held it up along with Bren’s.

  Golden fire burned away Alderon’s remnants, then surged back through the steel of both swords. From tip to hilt, hilt to hands, then all through me, battling the darkness, containing Alderon’s final murderous strike.

  My hair lifted from my shoulders as I yelled with triumph. Light seemed to boil from every cell in my body, purple, and white, and silver, and gold as the sound of my shout filled the entire Sanctuary.

  I felt a binding inside as I absorbed Alderon’s evil intentions and crushed them to nothing.

  Shadows parted and fell out of the sky. Sun blazed from a suddenly clean, cloudless sky.

  The tornado over the general store cracked, then split open, revealing Bren, full of Shadow arrows but alive, locked in a struggle to keep his life force from departing.

  I sent my energy swirling toward him, bringing him slowly down to the ground at the same time I was fighting for his life.

  The shadow arrows fired out of his flesh as if I had pulled some mighty bowstring. In seconds, his silvery hawk form flowed back into the holes in his chest, which closed before his feet ever touched the ground.

  All over L.O.S.T., fires went out. Somehow, I could see them all. I could see everything.

  Witches struggled upward as Shadow poisons drained from their wounds. My mother. Bren’s father. Rol. Acaw. Harpies, hags, Keepers, elflings, moderns…all of them.

  My own wound cleansed and bound itself, taking with it that terrible cold.

  As my awareness settled back into my own mind, I realized that many Shadows had not died. They had taken more human form, and they were scrabbling toward me, knees bent, heads lowered, collecting before me like a pathetic sea of ink and misery. The meaning was clear.

  Nire was defeated. Alderon dead. I was their ruler now.

  I had become the Shadow Queen.

  “Rise,” I shouted.

  The Shadows obeyed me.

  Sparks from my swords showered them like flaming rain. The creatures moaned and wailed, catching fire and burning, burning, darkness blazing away from them until…

  Until they were flesh again.

  Hundreds and hundreds of naked, shivering witches stood before me, human and oldeFolke alike. I saw all the magical races I knew, and some that had been naught but legend for centuries.

  As one, they once more went to their knees, as did the survivors of the battle of L.O.S.T. “Bren?” I called, my voice so loud every beast and witch covered his or her ears.

&nb
sp; From behind me, I heard a laugh. Then, “Jeez, baby. Could you dial it back a notch?”

  I turned around.

  Bren, at least, wasn’t naked.

  He was walking toward me, slowly. A little carefully.

  “I killed your brother Alderon,” I said, my voice still abnormally loud, but waning. My hair was calming down, too, settling back around my face and shoulders, though sparks shot here and there in random colors.

  Bren raised both hands. “I’ve got no problem with that. Really.”

  He stopped a few feet away. Opened his arms.

  Without hesitation I threw down my swords and ran into Bren’s waiting embrace.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty

  I didn’t remember passing out, but when I woke up in the healer’s hut, I knew I had.

  Cursing, I sat straight up. My father was there at the foot of my bed. His left cheek sported one massive bruise, but otherwise he seemed okay.

  “Jazz?” I croaked.

  “She’s fine.” He jerked his thumb to the west of us. “She’s in the hut next door, sleeping it off. You were both so exhausted you just fell where you stood. You kids must have been to hell and back.”

  “Something like that.” I took a glass of water he offered and killed it. The liquid felt cool as it went down, clearing my thoughts a little. I made a quick tally and to my relief everything was intact—arms, legs, toes, ears, fingers—well, almost all of them. Yep. This time, I hadn’t left any of myself on the battlefield.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Three days.” Dad took the water glass and refilled it from a nearby pitcher. I blinked because he did it without touching the pitcher.

  He saw my open mouth when he turned around, and he shrugged. “Whatever happened there at the end, it turned loose the little bit of magic I have inside. The little bit of magic every living thing in L.O.S.T. possesses. Did you know trees get pissed off when you pick an apple without asking?”

  I took the glass of water and tried not to think about it. Dad, however, kept going. “Grass makes you feel good when you touch it, and water, it’s so refreshing now. Do you think there’s a living force in water?”

  The gulp I had taken tried to come up in a big snort, but I managed not to choke to death.

  “Oh, sorry.” Dad grinned. “It’s just so new and wonderful. Except the fish. They’re just downright disrespectful, not to mention the crows and the blue jays.”

  He must have seen that I wanted to pass right back out and stay asleep forever, because he added, “But don’t worry. It seems to be fading away, except for humans and oldeFolke. I think we may get to keep the—ah—gift.”

  “What about Rol? Dame Corey?” I put down the glass of… of whatever magical alive water was called, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

  “Everyone’s fine, Bren. We lost a few, but the healers did amazing work with the rest.”

  “Todd,” I whispered, unable to avoid it any longer, but not wanting to ask.

  At this, Dad’s shoulders sagged.

  Dread spread through my chest and I got up too fast. My knees gave, but Dad caught me by the arm.

  “He’s gone, son. No—wait.” He doubled his grip to keep me from tearing away from him. “I don’t mean dead. I mean gone. As in not in L.O.S.T. Not in any Sanctuary.”

  I took a few seconds to process this as Dad turned me loose. He shook his head, and a little of the spark left his eyes. “We’ve done a thorough search, though Rol still hasn’t given up. He and the harpies are poking through different Sanctuaries, convinced they’ll find something. Acaw’s gone back to the Sacred Lands to get the slithers and see if those folks know anything. So far, there’s no trace. Except…”

  He broke off and looked at the floor. “Dad.” My jaw already hurt from clenching my teeth. “Tell me now. You know I’ll find out anyway.”

  Dad sighed and studied his fingernails. “It’s just that Sherise and Helden and those hags Helden runs with—the ones who didn’t defect—they have this wild story. I want you and Jazz to hear them out, see what you guys think.”

  “Sherise and Helden?” The memory of Jazz’s nightmare on our way to Talamadden shoved all my other thoughts to the side.

  She had dreamed that Todd was a prisoner. That Sherise and Helden and the hags had trapped him for some reason.

  “Take me to Jazz,” I told Dad. Then, remembering I was both king and son, I added, “Please.”

  A few hours later, in the late afternoon, I sat on a bench in Jazz’s favorite forest clearing, waiting with my arm firmly around her shoulders. She had been talking to me about keeping my temper all morning, in between kissing me and telling me how glad she was I had lived.

  We had come to the forest outside of what used to be oldeTowne, because the main town was too noisy, what with all the Shadow-people getting clothes made and the spelling, building, and repairing—and the fact that all the animals were running their mouths, too.

  Who knew dogs laughed so much? And the cats. Never mind. They were just a bunch of royal snots with British accents. It was too weird. At least out here in the forest, all we had to deal with were whispering plants and gossiping birds. The plants and trees I couldn’t understand at all. They were speaking fern-Martian, for all I knew. Jazz didn’t get them either. As for the rest of the wild animals, they thought we smelled bad and stayed away—or so the bears informed us before marching off toward Todd’s zoo.

  Todd’s zoo.

  My gut tightened all over again.

  Dame Corey and a bunch of the oldeFolke had been seeing to it. Todd, apparently, had been letting it go to hell for a while. Some of the slithers were half-starved, and the man-eating birds had started eating things they shouldn’t, like each other.

  “You’ve got to give them a chance, Bren. Sherise and Helden may have had good reasons for what they did.” Jazz’s voice was soothing. So beautiful and relaxing it made me want to kiss her every time I heard it, no matter what was going wrong around us.

  It might have been an enhancement from her moment of totally wild magic, like the water. Whatever. I didn’t want it to stop.

  “I know,” I grumbled. “I’ll try. But I should have been here.” She patted my leg, sending a golden burst of comfort straight to my heart.

  My girl had a lot of new abilities we hadn’t even begun to explore, stuff we figured she absorbed from Alderon, which included remnants of Nire, and converted into her own strong, good energy. There was no way to know if it would last, or if I would still be able to share it just by touching her like we did when our magic was joined.

  We’d just have to figure that out over time, along with what we were going to do with the newly restored Shadow-people. They just kept showing up in droves, from the Path, from other Sanctuaries, from places we didn’t even know existed. They didn’t need our help to use the Path, either. They could open and close doorways to Sanctuaries, and they could escort other Witches, just like Jazz and me. It took a lot of pressure off of us, but still. I knew that could turn out to be a problem. A serious one.

  The trees started whispering in their low Martian tree-voices, and my head snapped up.

  Dame Corey and Dad entered the clearing. Behind them came Helden, Sherise, and a small clan of hags who had supposedly remained loyal to us in the Battle of L.O.S.T.

  The two girls clung to each other, obviously nervous, as they approached and sat down on the bench across from us. The hags crowded behind them, hag-spirits wary and swaying, keeping beady black snake eyes trained on Jazz and me. Dame Corey seated herself next to Helden, while Dad sat next to Sherise.

  “I’m glad you made it home safely,” Helden said to Jazz.

  Sherise said the same thing to both of us with her wide, sad eyes. She seemed too intimidated to speak, so Helden got us rolling.

  “I know Queen Jasmina had a vision of what occurred in your absence—of our capture of Todd McAllister.”

  My good fist clenched, and I nodde
d. “You’ve got some explaining to do. Why would you go after my little brother like that?”

  A hag put her hand on Helden’s shoulder and hissed, but Helden just patted the gnarled fingers and said something in German that sounded very sweet. For a potential kidnapper.

  Sherise raised her hand and gripped her moonstone, fidgeting. “Just after you came back from the land of the dead the first time, Todd… changed. He started acting so weird, so different and all wrong—he didn’t even talk like himself. I finally realized the animals were just as nervous with him as I was, and that’s when I knew we had a huge problem. So, we tried to look into his heart through our stones.”

  She took a centering breath like Jazz did when she was really upset. “He sensed our probing and attacked us, and the hags had to help by tying him down, and we found—well—” She managed to meet my gaze. “It wasn’t Todd.”

  “What?” Jazz sounded as confused as I felt.

  Sherise looked at Helden, who took hold of her blue pendant. Starstone, Jazz said it was called.

  “Show them,” the hag behind her urged in a not-very-friendly voice.

  Dame Corey nodded, and my dad took a deep breath.

  The two girls kept one hand on their stones and laced their other fingers together. They both sighed, like they were relaxing, or sinking into some kind of meditation. Dame Corey kept up a comforting touch on Sherise’s knee, while Helden’s pet hag offered freaky hisses that probably passed for encouragement amongst their kind.

  The stones started glowing.

  Little by little, on the ground between our benches, a wavering image formed. It reminded me of lame movies we used to watch in school, but I could tell who the star was right away.

  My brother. There was no mistaking it.

  He looked like a combination of Alderon and Nire, the resemblance stronger than ever. And he looked totally furious as he struggled against the things that tied him. My skin crawled. Hag-spirits. That’s what had him all wrapped in knots.

  My whole body went stiff. I wanted to stand up and blast the girls and the hags into some other Sanctuary, but Dame Corey’s voice cut through my anger. “Keep watching.”

  I did. I didn’t want to, but I did.