Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series

by Christina McMullen

  Alas, I knew that my efforts were not a permanent solution. The Discordant would again return to our world, but I had bought enough time for humanity to grow and become strong enough to fight the lure of Chaos on their own. Secure in that knowledge, I laid down to take my final rest.

  * * *

  The present came rushing back and I staggered for a moment before opening my eyes. Desmond stared at me with concern, yet there was an intensity that made me realize he knew and accepted what had just happened to me.

  “I saw… I saw us,” I gasped. “What we were. It makes… It makes so much sense and yet…” I hadn’t been expecting the onslaught of emotion to hit me like a freight train through my gut. “I don’t know how this is supposed to help us.”

  I did not, would not, cry, but there was moisture in the corners of my eyes that I knew was both from awe and frustration. Truly, the only thing this extremely vivid and detailed vision did was give a possible explanation as to why I’d begun to experience un-Observer-like visions in the first place. That somewhere in me was the tattered scrap of a soul who lived Creator-only-knows how many thousands of years ago.

  “Wait. What if that’s it?” Desmond furrowed his brow in thought. “What if we’re the ones who are supposed to bring balance back to Blackbird?”

  Us? I nearly laughed aloud at the idea that Desmond and I, two fractured and damaged souls if ever there were, could possibly bring balance to anything. But then again, was it so odd? After all, we weren’t just a split soul, we were a positively ancient split soul. Quite possibly…

  * * *

  “The oldest split soul in existence.”

  Seth turned. The Creator wore a strange visage he’d never seen before. Humanoid, with the head of a creature that seemed to be a cross between an elk and a lizard. He realized this would have been the ancient god who was worshipped by the witch from his vision.

  “Exactly how old?” Seth asked, noting the rather dinosaur-like features of the god’s head/mask, which made the Creator chuckle.

  “Let us just say more than the mere thousands of years you’ve surmised, but not the millions you now suspect. Age is inconsequential, Seth. What matters now, I believe, is what happens not now, but in the next life.”

  “Next life?” Seth blinked. The wording was strange. Defiant of all the known Truths would have him believe. And yet… He understood. This was no vision. Rather, an emotion that filled his heart in a way that he’d never before experienced.

  “You’re beginning to see with more than your eyes,” the Creator said with a nod. “A sacrifice will be made, but a wrong will also be righted. Yours will be not the first deviation from the infinite routine, but it will be most significant, Seth. Do not let this go to waste.”

  As was typical, the Creator’s words were vague and lacked anything that resembled a hint as to what Seth’s next move might be. However, for the first time in more than a century of biting his tongue, Seth found that the obtuse observations did not bother him. In fact, it seemed that despite the abstractions, he understood the deviation he needed to make. With a smile of gratitude, Seth bowed to the Creator and re-entered the Cycle.

  * * *

  I returned to the Cycle just as Desmond began to second guess himself. That was odd enough on its own, but I would have expected the Creator to summon him as it had me. However, it seemed Desmond was no more enlightened than when I left. I wanted to reassure him, to let him know that yes, even though I could not yet explain why or how, he was right, but I too had doubts and could not find the words.

  But before I could say anything at all, a terrified and disturbingly familiar scream cut through the relative still of the early morning.

  “Oh my god!” I said, paralyzed by shock.

  Desmond was out of the Cycle in the blink of an eye. I might have been annoyed under normal circumstances, but I had a horrible feeling that time was going to be of the essence. Shaking myself out of my stupor, I ran, thanking the Creator that Blackbird’s downtown area was nothing more than a handful of small city blocks. If that scream was… no, I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn't think about it. Instead, I held my breath and sprinted the three blocks to the Lou Zephyr building, hoping against hope that Desmond got there in time to alert the authorities.

  As I rounded the building, my stomach gave a wild lurch. Desmond knelt, obscuring the body from view, but the red hair splayed across the pavement could only belong to one person. And yet, something had changed. I felt a strange energy shift and almost doubted my eyes when Donna sat up. If she had fallen from the roof, she was incredibly resilient. Not only wasn't she splattered across the pavement, but as she stared at her mobile phone as if she'd never seen one before, it was clear she hadn’t but a scratch on her.

  “Donna, did you...?” I wheezed, realizing that running while holding my breath probably wasn't the best idea. But it wasn't just that I was winded that caused words to fail me. The energy shift was stronger and there was definitely something different. And yet as I stared into the eyes of a bewildered Donna, there too was something familiar...

  “Abbey.”

  I hadn't meant to say the name out loud. I knew better than to say the name out loud. But instead of causing confusion, Donna looked up at me with an eerie smile of recognition.

  “The great, great, great something or other grandmother that you all wiped out of my memories? Yeah, I can see the resemblance.”

  “How on Earth?” I muttered, completely baffled at what I felt.

  “I got all that back. All of my memories… After I... after I came back.”

  There it was. Donna was no longer a witch. She had died and now she was an agent of Order. A Guardian, if I was not mistaken.

  Yet, that was impossible.

  Not that she would become an agent. After all, she had been a powerful mystic. Being not only powerful, but a Nyx to boot, recruitment after a traumatic death would have been inevitable. No, the impossibility was that she would be returned to the Cycle not only mere seconds after her death, but that she would be returned to Blackbird.

  “Ah!” Desmond remarked as comprehension sparked his smile to widen. “No one saw her die.”

  Certainly, if there was to be a loophole, that was as plausible as anything else. Still, in the time I’d been a part of Order, admittedly, not long in the grand scheme of things, I’d never heard of an instance where the recently deceased was returned anywhere near where they’d lived. The one hundred year rule was in place for a very good reason.

  And yet, why should this deviation from the rules seem strange when I alone held the knowledge that another deviation would be taking place?

  “Guys! We need to get to the mill!” Donna’s voice, clipped with irritation an impatience cut through my musing and I looked up, noticing that the storm that had been brewing was suddenly upon us and looking like the deadliest this area would see in a long time. I didn’t kid myself into thinking there was anything natural about this weather.

  “Round up the others. I'll go on ahead,” Desmond said, but I grabbed his arm right before he had a chance to slip out of time.

  “I'm going with you.”

  “Seth we-”

  “What we don't have is time to argue. Let's go.”

  Desmond didn't protest, but he spent a moment longer than necessary just staring at me before he nodded and pulled us both out of the Cycle. I could tell that he knew, as I did, that this was important.

  It had been a long while since I'd travelled trans-cyclically and as such, I had forgotten how disorienting it was. Slipping away to speak to the Creator or a visit to admin was one thing. Whenever I did that, I departed and arrived into the same spatial moment. Shortcutting from one place to another was a completely different experience and it seems I'd also forgotten about the disorientation and nausea, which were the last thing I needed to deal with upon entering the Cycle directly into a war zone.

  “I told you,” Desmond muttered just before blocking a werewolf from attacki
ng our position.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, scrambling to my feet and fighting back the urge to be sick. Admittedly, the middle of a war zone was also not the best place to display petty insecurities, but after all that we’d come to learn in the last few moments, I wasn’t about to chastise myself for a display of humanity. Besides, I had bigger issues.

  “Seth? Oh no, not here. Not now.”

  Mainly, another vision hitting me right as a pack of werewolves launched themselves as one in my direction. This one, however, was different. It wasn’t so much a vision in the traditional sense, but closer to the strong gut instincts that I’d been having for some time. My vision clouded and I knew the information that the Creator had imparted was coming to pass. There was a physical shift. I felt something indescribable deep within my being. A harmonious chanting filled my heart.

  Sacrifice. Severance. Covenant. Heal.

  By daybreak, balance would be restored, but victory would come at a cost. Donna’s metamorphosis was just the beginning. The Creator had said as much and I now understood. A sacrifice, a severing, a covenant, and a healing. This was how we were going to close the portal. It would not be easy and it would not be without a price, but it could be done. That in itself was enough to stir in me the giddy lightness of hope.

  Yet as the world came back into focus and I fell to my knees, the euphoria of relief vanished. I wasn’t the only one who had fallen to the ground. Desmond lay on his back, deep gashes marred his chest and abdomen in what had obviously been a werewolf attack.

  “Oh no! Des!” I scrambled to compose myself. My hands were shaking almost too much to be of any use, but I managed to get his leather jacket unzipped so that I could assess the damage.

  “Oh my god…”

  It was worse than I’d originally thought. He’d been gutted. I didn’t know a spell strong enough to close the wounds and although I knew it would be just a matter of minutes before the others arrived, I feared it would be too late.

  “Des, I need your help,” I said, hoping he was conscious enough to hear and understand me. The gray pallor of his complexion did not give me hope. “Can you contact Arkady? Is there a potion or something that will stop the bleeding?”

  “I’m fine,” he managed to rasp out, but I wasn’t having it.

  “Desmond, you’re bleeding to death. I can’t stop this on my own.”

  “I’m fine, Seth,” he said, gasping in a way that told me he was anything but fine.

  “No, you’re delirious,” I muttered and looked up. Luckily, the others were beginning to show up. “I’m going to go find Betty and see what she has…”

  “Seth…” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. Despite the pain, there was amusement in his eyes and a half-smile played on his lips. “I can’t die again, you know.”

  “Well… of course not,” I stammered. Okay, so perhaps in my moment of panic I might have forgotten that fact, but still, the amount of blood was alarming. “But this isn’t exactly the best place or time to be injured.”

  As it was, the storm was picking up at an alarming rate. I did my best to shield Desmond from the debris that was being tossed around, but being as slight as I was, I could only do so much.

  “Let’s at least get you moved out of the open,” I suggested.

  “Seth, stop. Don’t you see? ” He sat up with a grunt and turned to face me. “I did it… For once, I don’t need you to save me, Seth. I saved you.”

  “You… Is that…? Desmond! You can’t…” I’m not entirely sure what I had been expecting, but that was not it. “Desmond, it doesn’t work like that,” I began, but he held up a hand to silence me.

  “I understand things now,” he said, a shadow of a frown crossing his face. “Sarah, the wolves, the love and the hate, it all makes sense now.”

  I wasn’t following Desmond’s logic and I was pretty sure that it was the blood loss speaking, but before I could insist upon getting him help, a flash of bright light blinded us both, followed by a thunderous boom. The twin Guardians stumbled into the Cycle, bringing with them the worst of the storm. I watched in horror, paralyzed and unable to act as the two suddenly burst into pinpoints of light, joined hands and jumped, falling from our realm into that of Chaos. Though the light was damned near blinding, I couldn’t turn away as the wind picked up to near tornado speeds. All of the Discordant, from the tiniest pixies to the largest wolves, were picked up on the updraft, only to be sucked away by the swirling vortex that formed in the twins’ wake.

  “Sacrifice… Severance…”

  Desmond’s voice, though quiet, was like a gunshot in the stillness of the aftermath.

  “Covenant… Heal…” we said together and I smiled, seeing the understanding dawn on his face.

  “Thank you, Seth.”

  “For what?” I asked, confused as to what Desmond could be thanking me for.

  “For everything,” he said with a strange, but not unfamiliar expression. “For all the times you saved me. You might have been the darkness, Seth, but I… I love you.”

  “You…” I stammered, frozen in place by the weight of his words. Surely he couldn’t mean…

  “I think I’ve always meant to,” he continued, averting his eyes as if embarrassed. “But for a time, after I learned who you were, I hated you. It was… infuriating. Knowing that what I had thought was true love was simply two souls playing out the roles they’d played so many times before. No matter where I was, no matter who I was, you would always be there to catch me when I fell. And I always fell.

  “But I know now that the object of my ire wasn’t you for saving me. Rather, I had myself to blame for needing saving. I could never hate you because I needed you, Seth. I needed you to save me and I needed to save you in the end, so that I could finally reconcile my own shortcomings. I… I needed you to help me to love myself as unconditionally as I love you.”

  “Desmond…” My voice was little more than a choked whisper. Truly, there was nothing I could say. No words to express the sudden wholeness in my soul that was thousands of years in the making. And so, I said nothing as I leaned in, taking Desmond’s head into both hands, and kissed him.

  I kissed Desmond.

  I kissed Desmond!

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered, pulling away red-faced and yet, even as I apologized, I wanted to turn back and kiss him again.

  “Don’t be,” he said, reaching up to turn my head back to face his, not surprised, but greatly relieved to see that he was smiling as he leaned in close. “All is as it should be.”

  “Not yet it ain’t.”

  I looked up and saw Harry, a cross in one hand, a holy sword in the other, staring down at Desmond and me with something akin to amusement in his expression.

  “Would you two lovebirds mind joining the rest of us so we can finish this fight?”

  Chapter 11

  Return of the Seven

  I felt powerful. I felt invincible. I felt…

  Like I was going to throw up.

  As I fell back into the Cycle, I caught sight of my broken body and cringed. I didn’t think it was possible that I’d had that much blood in me to begin with, but the fact that it had all but exploded out of me was no surprise given the fist sized hole in my neck where the vamp had been gnawing. I guess it wasn’t as clean a break as I’d thought. And since I’d been too distracted by blood loss to attempt a graceful landing, my body lay in a crumpled pile of broken limbs splayed out at all the wrong angles. I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my entire life than I was at the fact that my death had been nearly instantaneous and I wasn’t conscious enough to experience any of what had happened.

  Of course, no sooner had the thought crossed my mind when I felt a pull coming from my corpse and I stumbled, falling face first into my own gore. Oddly, I felt no pain, but as my new form crawled in and began sorting out my mangled parts, shrugging on my skin like a rumpled hoodie, the grossness of the situation made me gag and dry heave for a solid minute after I�
��d worked out all of the kinks. I may not have suffered while dying, but I was pretty sure that my return to the Cycle was the most traumatic to ever occur.

  If this is what being a special snowflake was all about then there sure was something to be said for being ordinary. Seriously, I was going to have to cook up a nuclear powered memory spell to forget that event.

  But at least I was whole again. My chest cavity was solid and I could feel ribs and a beating heart. I also had feeling in all of my extremities. In fact, were it not for a very pronounced shift in my magic, I might have been able to convince myself that I’d hallucinated the whole event.

  Something poked me in the side and I rolled over, off of what I thought was a broken chunk of sidewalk. Turns out, it was the book of spells. Somehow, despite having previously been in my side pocket, it managed to stay protected from all my blood and gore. Well, no, I realized that was wrong. The book more than likely absorbed my blood to strengthen the spells contained within and that protected it from the gore. Earth magic was weird and kind of gross that way.

  But gross or not, I was willing to bet my former life that the spell we needed to close the portal and end the battle was in that book. I picked it up and flipped through the pages, expecting to feel as I had previously by instinct which spell we needed. Instead, I felt nothing. Well, not nothing. I could still feel that it was an incredibly powerful tome, but the magic didn’t speak to me. I was suddenly and painfully aware of the reason for the shift.

  I wasn’t a witch anymore.

  I didn’t expect it to be a gut punch. Admittedly, I didn’t even consider that I’d have to give up my role as a mystic, but in a way, it made sense. I knew too much to ascribe to a human construct of faith. Heck, if the Creator was to be believed, I knew even more than the typical agent. Still, it felt as if a part of me, a part of my soul, was gone and I started to cry.

  “Donna?”

  I looked up just as Desmond came skidding back into the Cycle and dropped to his knees in front of me. Noticing the tears that I wasn’t trying to hide, his eyes went wide.