Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel

by Abigail Gibbs

  “And how do you suggest we do that? Your damn hex is affecting us, too!” That accent was a regional one from the southwest of England. I tried to place the direction the sounds were coming from, but they came from everywhere.

  There was no reply, and I wondered if they had moved away from me; either way, I stood stock-still, hardly daring to move in case I made a sound. In contrast, my mind was attempting to scour away the haze to find something, anything, from my lessons on hexes, because I knew what this cloud was, I just couldn’t name it and I couldn’t defend against it, because my mind was still too sluggish.

  “Giles!”

  “Abria?”

  “Giles, where are you?”

  “I don’t know! I’m injured, the Athan are here!”

  The accents were mingling into one now, though I thought I heard something Eastern European. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t think. The mist was seeping into the air I was inhaling again, and though I filled my lungs with shallow breaths, I could feel my heartbeat pulsing erratically and my eyes falling shut.

  “Fallon! Where are you?” The cry was out of my mouth though I had never chosen to say anything, because my mouth was working independently of my head. The mist had spoken for me, because it drew them closer to where I was frozen.

  “Autumn! Are you hurt?”

  “Fallon! It’s the Extermino! They’re near me!”

  “Autumn? Are you there? Say something!”

  He couldn’t hear me, yet I could continue to hear his yelps for me, or Edmund, or Richard. None were returned.

  “Galdur! I hear the girl. She must be near. Galdur?”

  “Edmund!” The accent was Canadian, and I finally opened my eyes to the mist with the hope the sound brought.

  “Alya, we can’t fight it! Alya, do you understand? Don’t fight it!” It was Edmund, speaking in Sagean, and it gave me the strength to light a fire, no more than the size of a flame on the end of a matchstick, to hold in front of my nose and mouth. I let it burn for a few seconds, took a long gulp of clean air, and then extinguished it.

  “Edmund, I can’t hear you!” said the same woman, and it was shortly followed by Richard, as calm and controlled as his counterpart, repeating the other man’s instructions. The Athan’s message must have spread, because before I was even close to needing another mouthful of air, there were several screams.

  “Galdur’s dead!” the man with the local accent yelled. “Sif, Tomas, help me out here! Abria, stay with Giles!”

  I very quickly lit a second flame and took another gulp of fresh air, unable to judge distance from the voices but unnerved by the movement of the mist in front of me. I relied on no sense, element, magic, or consciousness, but I could tell someone was close—very close.

  Again, I did not dare shield, and absurdly chose to rely on the mist to act as my first line of defense—it was clear the Extermino were no better off trapped within their own hex than we were. My hand, instead, clasped around the dagger below my skirt.

  He appeared out of nowhere, closer than seemed logically possible; I even saw his stunned expression as he trod on one of my feet. There was no time to comprehend another plan, and so I chose the curse I knew would keep me safest.

  “Mortalitis Sev!” Die willingly.

  The magic released itself as soon as I uttered the first syllable and had racked his body by the time I uttered the last. He slumped forward into me and I took the opportunity to plunge my knife into his stomach and twist as I heaved him back, cradling him as much as my strength would allow so the knife could do its work. I had never cast a death curse—it wasn’t ever taught—and knew only the theory. I couldn’t be sure it had worked. I wanted him dead; I wanted him dead so I could take revenge for the innocent human life the Extermino had taken weeks before on the harbor.

  When he was on the ground, I rolled his eyelids down, asked fate to carry him on whichever path it wished after death, and then just looked at him. In death, my grandmother’s auburn scars had glowed brighter, and for a very long time, I had thought she was maybe asleep. Sleeping on the floor of the parlor, and then sleeping in her glass casket as she lay in state, and then sleeping as she was interred in the Athenean cathedral. Whoever had killed her had been taught the death curse. They had done a perfect job. I had botched it on him. His gray Extermino scars were shriveling up, because blood was flowing freely from his stomach where I had extracted my dagger.

  Somebody else was coming and I got ready again. I will do it better this time. I will make you proud, Grandmother. But I didn’t do it again, because when that person appeared, I knew I could not kill him.

  His scars were gray. He was a Sagean Extermino. There was no doubt about that. But his shaggy hair; the heavy, deep Devonshire accent I had repeatedly heard; the expression of his I recognized from when he had asked what was wrong with working in a café . . . they were human. They were very, very human.

  “Nathan?” I breathed.

  The man didn’t look up or show any sign of recognition. But he didn’t attack me, either. Instead, he busied himself with his work, slipping his arms under the man’s legs and neck, hoisting the corpse up. The whole time he eyed my dagger, though he didn’t seem too concerned about it.

  When he stood up, he met my eyes. It was brief, it was silent, but I knew he was answering. It was a mournful moment, yet it had nothing to do with the dead body in his arms. He didn’t show any sign of affection toward his dead comrade.

  Nathan is an Extermino.

  I felt the pull of raw energy hurtling toward us and had to step forward as it tugged on the magic in my blood. The borders between dimensions were open, and Nathan was about to cross them. Succumbing, the pair disappeared. I followed him in my mind. He would arrive almost instantaneously in another dimension, and then he would cross back to this one, ending up in Iceland, or wherever the Extermino had chosen to base him. Dimension-hopping. Not outlawed, but frowned upon. The thin veils of energy that hung between the parallel worlds were under enough tension just from people crossing from one dimension to another in the same location; they didn’t need to be modes of transportation between different places, too.

  That was all so clear in my mind. What I had just seen wasn’t. The thought of what it meant, irrelevant. Perhaps it was the mist.

  I can’t think. I don’t want to think.

  Like the instinct that had told me the two men were approaching, an instinct told me I was now safe—until I felt an intense burning, growing ever hotter. I knew what to do, and what was coming. Casting a flame between my palms, I burned away the surrounding mist to create a cushion of air, protecting myself as fire ripped away at the hex, leaving everything else untouched.

  The roar subsided, and the fire was dragged away to my left at Edmund’s will as he directed it with his fingers from the other side of the field. I blinked a few times. The scene he had cleared for us was not what I had been expecting. Edmund, whose voice had seemed so sharp and so clear, was standing just outside of the tennis courts, as though he had barely moved. The prince, who had seemed distant, was only about fifteen feet to my left. The other Athan had disappeared. I was pinned in a corner at the apex of two banks, and was, in fact, standing halfway up one of them. Taking in my feet, which sloped with the bank, a wave of dizziness hit me. I dropped down and crossed my legs, waiting to be collected, as I didn’t feel capable of anything else.

  As soon as he had completed his task, Edmund rushed over and was with us in a second. He charmed into his hands a glass with a rubber-lined lid and clamps, and scooped up the last few wisps of the mist that he had left floating near us. Screwing and clamping the glass shut, he burned away the remainder.

  “What was that?” the prince asked, shakily walking over and dropping down at the foot of the bank below me. He looked as exhausted and disoriented as I was.

  “You learned about block hexes at your Sagean schools, didn’t you?” Edmund asked. We both nodded. “Well, that was one, mixed with some sort of air-and-water
hex. But we are trained against those. It shouldn’t faze us. That, therefore, was something new. And we need to find out what.”

  The prince’s head dropped into his hands, and his hands onto his bent knees. “We’re in so much trouble, aren’t we?”

  Edmund, eyeing me rather than his young royal charge, narrowed his eyes. “As soon as I know it’s safe, I am going to make you wish you had never been born.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, beginning to slide down the bank without getting up. “Guarding young human life is one of the main clauses of the Terra Treaties, so I don’t—miarba!”

  I dived for my leg, clutching the outer part of my thigh just above my knee as something ripped through the skin. It was like being cut open by a very, very large thorn. When I looked down to the ground, I realized that was almost exactly what had happened, because lying in the long tufts of grass was a stake. It was a dumpy thing, no more than a foot long, and tapered from the thickness of my fist to a shard that looked like it could be snapped off. It couldn’t. My heavily bleeding leg was proof of that.

  Edmund was at my side the moment I gasped in pain. The prince ran up, too. They both swore when they saw the cause of my injury.

  “A slayer’s stake? That . . . that is all we need. Great,” the prince neatly summarized in a dry tone. “The slayers in league with the Extermino. Today has sucked!” He threw his arms up in frustration.

  Edmund, ever practical, stooped down to examine the weapon. He cast a spell along its length. “Fallon, if you have finished being a drama queen, the duchess is bleeding.” He looked at me. “The tip isn’t poisoned or enchanted. You’re very lucky; in their hurry to leave, it was probably just dropped rather than planted.”

  The prince looked sheepish and offered me his shoulder to hoist myself up on. Once I was up, the pain subsided substantially, and I told them to let me walk on my own. Edmund was anxious to get off the field to the comparative safety of the main school buildings, and moving under my own power was quicker than hopping.

  Racing down the steps in Edmund’s wake, I could have groaned aloud as I realized practically the whole school had congregated in the quad. The headmaster had his megaphone out and was attempting to calm the hordes, most of whom were very pale.

  As everybody turned to watch us enter, I shuffled to the right to hide behind Edmund’s back. The prince shuffled to the left. Entering the ring of people, Edmund just kept going as I halted beside Tammy and the others, who stared very openly at me. I realized I was probably covered in blood, and not all of it my own. It wasn’t exactly the perfect image to present, considering what had happened.

  Edmund marched on toward the English building, only to be halted midstep by a firefighter in the doorway (which still hadn’t been repaired from the night of the storm). The Athan clearly were not in the habit of stopping for other people, because Edmund went to sidestep him. The firefighter mirrored him.

  “Sir, you can’t go in there quite yet.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Edmund chirped in an unnaturally agreeable voice. “Out here will do.” Turning around, he clapped his hands together and marched toward a bench. Just before he reached it, he dismissively flicked his hand out to the side. From outside the building came a loud shriek of pain. I glared at him for clearly casting some kind of spell on the firefighter as he rounded on me.

  “Pantyhose off.”

  I closed my eyes briefly in exasperation. The prince is right. Today sucks. It cannot possibly get any more embarrassing. Nevertheless, though I had only met him the same day (though apparently not for the first time), I could tell Edmund’s mood was murderous as promised, and dragged my feet over to the bench.

  “P-pardon?” the headmaster stuttered, catching the corner of his megaphone, which gave an almighty screech. Mr. Sylaeia was nearby and answered him by simply pointing at my leg. Though my tights were reasonably opaque, they were stained even darker by the blood down my left, unscarred leg.

  I slid them down by tugging from below the tear. It was about the most painful way to do it, as the blood had caked to the torn mesh and my skin, but also the only modest way.

  Mr. Sylaeia hissed as soon as he saw my flesh. “What did that?”

  “This,” the prince said, coming forward with the stake in hand. The teacher’s mouth dropped, but he motioned for the weapon. It was placed on the bench next to us. Edmund patted the closer bench and I climbed up, sitting on the table and resting my feet on the seat.

  “I can heal it myself,” I said defiantly.

  Everybody’s attention was on Mr. Sylaeia, the prince, and the stake they were examining now as Edmund washed my wound. “I think you have cast enough complex magic for today, young lady,” he muttered, low enough so only I could hear. His gaze flicked up and he met my eyes. I inhaled. He bowed his head.

  How did he know about that? He had been on the other side of the field!

  He said no more on the subject, and I had to be content to sit and grit my teeth as he worked on the wound, which wasn’t as much of a clean cut as I had originally thought. It was painful, as his magic stitched it together; I could feel every prick of a spark penetrating my skin, and even worse was the knowledge his hands were so far up my leg in front of everybody. I wished he would let me do it myself. Or let the prince do it.

  “It belonged to a member of the Pierre clan,” Mr. Sylaeia informed us, very wisely choosing not to use English. “I minored in Sagean and vamperic history,” he then added apologetically, as though he was immediately doubting his own statement. “It’s a long time since I studied it, so I can’t be sure without looking up the crest on the handle.”

  Edmund nodded. “The style is Romanian, so I will take your word for it.”

  I dragged my gaze away from the three men to stare at my knees. The Pierre clan. The very same clan who had murdered the late vamperic queen; the very same clan Kaspar Varn and his clique had wreaked revenge upon the night of the London Bloodbath. It shouldn’t have surprised me that they had contact with the Extermino, and I supposed it didn’t—the latter would be useful to the slayers in that they could get them across the borders between the dimensions. But I hadn’t forgotten the prince’s words to me in my kitchen. Violet Lee’s father was in league with the Pierre clan. Humans, slayer or not, were no real threat to the vamperic kingdom. But other dark beings? That was bad. That was really, really bad.

  Out of the blue, a woman leaped from the top of the hall building and landed within feet of Edmund. “It’s clear for half a mile in every direction. It seems they all crossed the borders.”

  “Good. Get a full dome shield up. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out; not even the air,” Edmund replied, never taking his eyes off his work on my leg.

  “What about the humans?” I asked.

  “Not our problem. My job is to protect you. I don’t care about them.”

  The message must have been relayed, because at that moment I felt a wall of intense magic pass right through me and on to my classmates, whose eyes shot up to the sky—except the sky had disappeared. Instead, the space above us was painted a watery mixture of gray and electric blue: a lid had been placed over the school, and with it came the same eerie drone of a siren that the lightning had triggered at Burrator. But this siren never went away.

  True panic set in, greater than what I had briefly seen before the mist had engulfed me. People screamed and wailed; the light was artificial and tinted blue, and the air was thick with energy and hard to push from the lungs. Eventually, the oxygen would run out.

  Richard dropped down, followed by another young woman, who looked considerably younger than the other three. As she approached, Edmund’s expression, permanently set into a frown since the incident with the fireman, softened.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her in a low voice. Nobody outside our circle would hear it anyway; the groan of the shield was so loud.

  “Shaken,” she answered.

  He gave a sm
all smile, running a finger down my virtually healed leg to eliminate the red line and bruising. “I told you the princes are always an eventful assignment.”

  She didn’t look shaken, and inquired whether he had saved a sample of the mist—by the way they talked, she sounded like an alchemist. All four seemed a lot more relaxed now the shield was up, and she moved away to examine the stake.

  “My sister,” Edmund explained, watching her leave. “You’re done. Try placing weight on it.” I slid down and experimentally leaned on my left leg. There was no pain, though my thigh felt numb. I told him so. He didn’t seem concerned.

  He didn’t seem too concerned about the humans, either, or the fact they didn’t particularly like being trapped in a giant fishbowl. Only the prince had reacted in any way, going over to try and calm down the headmaster, who was concerned first about the Athan jumping all over his buildings and second about the dome. Mr. Sylaeia tackled the other teachers. The students were left to, well, gawk.

  “Edmund, you can’t leave the shield up all day. We’ll suffocate,” I muttered, not entirely sure that in his zealous pursuit of safety that fact had actually registered.

  “It won’t be up all day. We’re going.”

  “Going where?”

  “Back to Burrator.”

  “Me too?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t.”

  He was preoccupied with the stake, casting it away, and was not looking at my expression. “Of course you can. Your leg will be fine now.”

  “I won’t go.”

  His gaze darted up, and he began to advance toward me. I lost my nerve slightly, backing into the bench. “My lady, we cannot guarantee that the school is safe without the shield, which as you rightly pointed out cannot be maintained,” he explained so slowly it verged on patronizing. “Send the humans home if you are concerned about them.”