Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4)

by Sarah Ashwood

  “Maybe you have, but I haven’t. I never wanted war.”

  “No, you didn’t want anybody to contest you,” she spat. “I did, and you couldn’t handle it, could you? Somebody standing up to the mighty Sean Costas…that couldn’t be tolerated.”

  “True,” someone put in with a sour chuckle. I don’t think anyone else even caught the aside. I glanced over at Ciara Costas. She was back in her human form, in the wheelchair. The Nakki water shifter stood next to her, also reverted to human form, her hand resting lightly on the back of the wheelchair.

  “Enough of this,” said Vehuel, stepping forward, edging between the two shifter leaders. “He is correct. Humans will not accept us, nor will they ever change. We will not risk your lives or theirs.” He indicated the people beyond the glowing portal. “We have not lingered in the beyond, waiting these many centuries to be restored, only to risk our welfare on a gamble that is certain to end badly.”

  Sean eased back from his longtime rival, an air of triumph on his features. “You see?” he shrugged. “They side with me. This is over, Nosizwe. You’ve lost.”

  “Like hell I have,” she growled, and flicked her arm in some sort of signal.

  Chaos broke loose again. Before I could blink, more than half the people gathered in the headlight-lit circle of trampled, bloody grass altered. They were no longer human, but monsters. The big cats, those that were still alive, bounded to their feet, even the wounded ones. In a blur of motion and terror and color and movement, they were all charging.

  Right towards us.

  Towards Carter and myself and the two creatures he’d brought with him.

  Worse than that, I heard a voice rise over the chaos, and it wasn’t a mere human voice.

  Shocked, I turned towards Mrs. Costas. She was back on the ground, once more in a pool of water. The Nakki girl was gone, and Ciara was in her Merrow form. Singing. Seizing control.

  Sean tried to move, but he was arrested by his wife’s voice and acted too slow. Carter did move. Shifting into the Talos and shoving me away from himself, he lunged for Sean. He was too late. Nosizwe had already shifted, and this time she plunged her beak into Sean’s already wounded abdomen, ripping it open again. I heard myself scream as if from a distance. It was like reliving a nightmare. I knew the agony he was enduring. I’d been there myself. So had Sean tonight, already. He sank to the ground, but he wasn’t done yet. Hatred burned in his eyes.

  “Kill her,” he muttered through lips already dribbling blood.

  Nosizwe, as the Impundulu, didn’t have time to counter before Carter was on her. He’d claimed he didn’t have any training with a sword, and I know he wasn’t lying, but I guess it didn’t take much training to figure out how to raise and swing one. In fact, he looked pretty skilled as he swept the glowing blade of the Repairer’s sword in a neat arc that lit up the night air, leaving a trail of fire as it neatly sliced through the neck of the giant bird. I sucked in a cry. The mighty Impundulu tottered a step or two as its head went flying in a different direction. Then the body fell with a crash, shifting back into human form as it dropped. Nosizwe’s headless corpse lay sprawled in the grass next to the gutted, bleeding form of her archrival, Sean Costas.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  But the battle wasn’t over yet.

  All of this had happened within an instant, a flash of time. Mrs. Costas was still singing. Carter must have sprung into action before her song could take effect. Now, with the bodies of both Nosizwe and Sean Costas lying at his feet, the Talos, turned, sword still in hand, towards his former boss’s wife. My throat constricted as the bronze man stared at her. Was he going to attack her? Kill her? Why didn’t he move?

  I heard his name in the song, and realized this was more than I’d originally thought. She wasn’t merely using her magic, her song to charm Sean’s people into not fighting, weakening their side and strengthening hers. This time, she was deliberately singing to the Talos. Again, her vocals were in Gaelic, so I couldn’t decipher her orders, but I did pick out his name. I saw him freeze, then take a step. And another step. And another step. Towards his own side. I saw him raise the sword.

  Two shifters were locked in combat. One I’d noticed around the Costas mansion, so I knew she was somebody Carter would know. That didn’t stop him. He drew back the sword. Horrified, I screamed his name, but he either didn’t hear me or was too far under Ciara’s power. He rammed the blade into the woman’s back. I saw it explode out her torso in a spray of scarlet. She transformed into a human with a gurgling scream, sinking to her knees as the Talos wrenched the sword free.

  I fully expected he’d move on to the next one of Sean’s people, but he didn’t. The shifter battling the woman he’d just killed must’ve expected it too. He actually dared to transform back into his human self, long enough to stand there smiling and say, “Nice work, Ballis. Welcome to the dark side.”

  He didn’t smile long. The Talos didn’t even use the sword this time, but reached out almost casually with a powerful bronze hand, grabbing him by the neck.

  “Ba—Ballis,” the man choked, scrabbling at the bronze hand squeezing his neck with both of his own. It did no good. He tried to shapeshift, but the Talos gripped harder. He must’ve snapped his neck with that incredible squeeze, because the man went limp, halfway between human and shifter form, his head dangling.

  Carter let the body drop, and moved onto his next victim. Finally, I understood what was happening, what Mrs. Costas was doing. Either she was singling people out that she saw as a threat, or she intended to have Carter butcher practically everyone out there. She had brilliantly ensured that both Sean and Nosizwe were gone, clearing the way for her to assume their roles, and she was now using Carter, underneath her spell, to solidify her power. How far this would go, I didn’t know, but I had to stop it. I knew, in his right mind, Carter would never forgive himself for killing his own people. He was going to be shaken when he came out of this and saw what he’d done.

  I couldn’t let it continue, nor could I let Ciara win.

  It felt like hours since the world around me exploded into battle, but in reality mere seconds had slipped by. I turned to the two shifters who’d come through the breach with Carter.

  “Do something,” I begged. “Stop her. Stop him. You have the power, don’t you?”

  Seriel appeared very solemn, even sad as she shook her head. “This is not our war. This is not our time. We have endured our own battles. We will not engage in yours.”

  “Theirs,” I corrected. “I’m not a shapeshifter. I’m not a part of this, either. But somebody has to do something.”

  Vehuel, the man I’d met on the other side, shrugged. “If you can, do so.”

  I glared at him. “You’re a coward. You saved Carter’s life and brought him that sword, spun all that fancy-sounding crap about him being the Repairer. Now he’s being used like a tool by a vicious, vindictive woman to do things he’d hate, and you refuse to step in? I thought you were different. I thought you were an angel, but you’re not. You’re exactly like them. You’re every bit as bad as Sean and Ciara and Nosizwe and all the rest.”

  He didn’t respond, and I was out of time.

  I spun around and ran towards the source of the mass confusion. Someone hollered my name and I shot a glance over my shoulder. Fighting her way through the squirming, grunting, warring bodies was Detective Ewing. I didn’t know where her partner was. Maybe he’d gotten out, for which I couldn’t blame him.

  “C’mon,” I shouted, beckoning to her.

  I dodged some sort of tall, lumbering humanoid with red skin and suckers on its hands. It didn’t pursue me but moved on to another target. I was exposed, but waited for her anyway, knowing I could use backup. She had to sidestep a creature or two herself, even pulled her gun on one that stopped in her path. Whatever it was, it retained enough humanity that it yowled an unnatural screech at her, then dove away, seeking a different target. She made it to me and I took off running again.

>   “Mrs. Costas?” she huffed, keeping pace beside me.

  “Yes,” I answered grimly. “She’s controlling the Talos. We’ve got to stop her if we’re going to stop this.”

  The detective didn’t reply. Together, we plunged through the last ring of shifters until we were next to the Stones and facing the Merrow.

  She was where I’d left her, still on the ground, more water bottles strewn around. She saw me and smiled lazily, kept singing. She was so extraordinarily beautiful in this state that even I stood there blinking like a dummy for a second while my brain whirled to throw off the spell. I guess the cop’s training kicked in, because she didn’t even hesitate. She whipped out her Glock, pointed it directly at the Merrow and said, “Stop. Right now. Stop the singing, unless you’re going to end the battle like you did before.”

  Mrs. Costas only smiled and kept singing.

  Detective Ewing held her ground. “I will shoot you,” she said calmly. “Stop. The. Singing.”

  I cast the police officer a nervous, sideways glance. I’d come over with the exact same intention: to pull a gun on Ciara and try to force her to stop. Now push had come to shove. Would she actually do it? Would Detective Ewing pull the trigger?

  Bam!

  A body careened into the officer from the side, knocking her off her feet, sending her into a roll. She cried out in anger. I reacted on instinct, leaping out the way, but felt myself grabbed by the ankle. I looked down. The water puddle in which Ciara lounged to assume her Merrow form had a face. A terrible, ghostly, hideous face that I remembered from my nightmares. And what had captured me was a hand. A hand formed of water, but strong as steel. I froze, terror welling up inside. The same terror I’d felt when the Nakki first attacked me in Carter’s bathroom. It was like I was both reliving the attack and its sheer terror. The Nakki smiled and jerked on my foot, sending me plummeting to my backside. I yelped and tried to scramble away. She didn’t release me.

  Meanwhile, from the corner of my eye I could see the detective was still on the ground. Unlike me, she didn’t freeze. In fact, she had rolled, using hip and leg strength to throw off her attacker. Apparently, she’d lost her gun, since she didn’t draw it and shoot. With the darkness and fear it was hard to tell, but I thought her assailant was possibly the Nunda, who controlled the big cats.

  Great.

  All he had to do was summon a couple lions or tigers and we were both goners.

  He probably didn’t have to do that, though. Our odds of getting out of here alive weren’t great. Mine weren’t, anyway. I had to quit paying attention to the detective in order to save my own skin. The Nakki was pulling at me. Pulling at my ankle, dragging me towards the puddle,

  like she’d pulled me towards the bathtub in Carter’s apartment, attempting to drown me. Unlike last time, the Talos wouldn’t come save me. He was locked under the Merrow’s spell.

  I had to get myself out of this.

  The Nakki had my foot in the water by this point. Her ghostly, watery hands were climbing up my leg. Could she drown me in that puddle? Or was she merely enjoying scaring me?

  It was someone else’s turn to be scared.

  I still had my Beretta. Even as she dragged me over the rough ground, I squirmed to pull it out of my waistband. Fighting her hold, flipping over from stomach to back, I grasped the butt of my gun in both hands and lifted it, held it steady.

  “This is your one chance,” I said, speaking through chattering teeth. “Let me go, or I’ll shoot.”

  The ghostly face grinned wider…and let go.

  I tumbled backwards onto my elbow, retaining my grip on the weapon with one hand, only to feel myself swept up in a tight embrace, and ripped right off the ground. It wasn’t a hug meant to comfort or seduce. The arms were like a vice, crushing. It was the reddish-skinned humanoid with the suckers on its hands, suckers that it now attached to either side of my neck. I felt my skin stinging and swelling, felt my limbs weakening.

  Vaguely, through the roar of pressure in my ears, I heard Detective Ewing shout, but I didn’t know if it was because of her own battle or what was happening to me. The creature had pinned my arms to my sides when it picked me up, and I’d dropped my gun. I kicked my legs and wriggled my upper half, but it was as ineffective as a fly struggling in a spider web. The monster squeezed harder, and my body was weakening at an alarming rate. I didn’t know what the suckers on my neck were doing to me, but something horrible was happening. Blackness filled the corners of my vision. My head felt like it would explode. I couldn’t breathe.

  So this is how it ends… whispered a sad, small voice in my brain. Everything you’ve survived, and this is how it ends…

  Bright light overtook the darkness, even as my head sagged on my neck.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  It wasn’t the glow of a golden city, welcoming me home. It wasn’t even the brightness of death separating my soul from my body.

  I heard my attacker grunt, felt the pressure around my torso ease. He stumbled backwards, taking me with him, but his grip was loosening. The brightness intensified, even as the pressure continued to ease. He made garbled, angry, pain-filled noises. All at once he dropped me. I fell to the ground, on my belly, tried to climb up to my hands and knees and couldn’t even do that. I lay there, panting, moaning over my stinging, swollen face, not to mention my bruised torso where I’d been wounded by Nosizwe and had surgery only weeks before. I didn’t know that I hadn’t been internally damaged, but I couldn’t worry about that now. Groaning, I managed to roll myself over so I could see what was going on.

  The reddish-humanoid was still stumbling backwards, its hands now flung over its eyes. Vehuel was in front of him, his arm outstretched. From his hand sprang a beam of white light, brilliant as lightning, which he directed at my attacker’s face. The creature’s jaws split as it growled unintelligibly. I stared, dumbfounded, at the crazy sight. After a second or two Vehuel lowered his hand and the light faded. The creature stumbled off into the battle, hands still clutching at its face, covering its eyes, shrieking in agony.

  Vehuel turned to me and offered a hand. I scrabbled away.

  “I will not hurt you,” he said patiently, but I was leery. I’d never seen anything like what he’d done, and I’d seen plenty of crazy crap since falling in with shapeshifters. Did I want to mess with a guy who had that kind of ability?

  “As you like,” he said, retaining his imperious manner. Drawing his robes a little tighter around himself, he turned away. “Come to us if you would find safety.”

  Maybe I should’ve taken him up on his offer. In the chaos of being assaulted by the reddish monster and Vehuel stepping in with his magic light, I’d forgotten the Nakki, but she hadn’t forgotten me. I felt a hand seize my ankle again and I screamed, kicking wildly, knowing what was happening but unable to stop it. The grip tightened, jerking me off balance.

  She was smiling. “The Yara-ma-yha-who didn’t get to finish drinking your blood, but that just means I get to take care of you.”

  Drink my blood? Now I understood the suckers on my face, the stinging and swelling, the physical weakness. Horrified, I scrabbled for my gun, which I’d dropped when the Yara-ma-yha-who had snatched me up. My fingers tore through rough grass, dirt, pebbles, rocks…and latched onto something hard, metallic. I grabbed it, rolled over and fired.

  The shot missed, but that was on purpose. Since I didn’t know that she could actually kill me in such a small amount of water, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to shoot her outright. Still, I aimed right next to her face in the water and hit where I aimed. Water sprayed and the creature’s eyes went huge. The next thing I knew, her watery hand had dissolved, freeing me, and her ugly face in the puddle had vanished. She’d leapt up, transforming as she did, and a scared young woman stood there blinking at me.

  I held my gun level and stared her down. “Get out of here,” I said. “Next time you won’t be so lucky.”

  She edged away a few steps, spun, and ran off into th
e night towards the parked cars.

  With her absence, I abruptly noticed something else. The absence of music. My gaze switched to Mrs. Costas, who now lay in nothing more than a patch of mud…which definitely lessened the power and beauty of her appearance as a Merrow. In fact, I could see the ripple passing over her body, indicating she was trying to shift back into human form. Multiple ripples, because she seemed to be stuck. She wriggled about desperately in the muck, looking like a fish out of water, thrown up on a muddy bank. It might have been halfway humorous if she hadn’t looked so desperate.

  “I can’t change,” she was sputtering. “I can’t change.”

  I swallowed hard. I should have killed her, or else walked away and left her to her fate. But enough humanity remained, despite all of the ways she’d harmed me, that I approached her cautiously and sank down on my heels.

  “Do you need more water?” I asked. “I can look for more water bottles.”

  “It isn’t that,” she responded, her desperation visible. “My red cap. Sean must have done something with it. I—I’m stuck, I can’t shift. I can’t live life like this—in Merrow form on dry land. What did he do with it? How? He’s been here the whole time!”

  I craned my neck to glance over my shoulder. He was definitely still here, where he’d fallen on the trampled grass, his rival’s headless corpse beside him.

  “I don’t know,” I said, swinging my focus back to her. “What can I do?”

  “Do? Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Pure hatred filled her eyes. “You came into our lives that November night, and everything since has gone to hell.”

  I rocked back on my heels. “You’re blaming me? What about my life? My life’s the one that went to hell that night.”

  “No.” She struggled to push herself up on one elbow in the mud. “No, you ruined everything, Ellie.”