The Waking Magic (Winter's Blight Book 3)

by M. C. Aquila

  Alan ripped his arm from Cai’s grasp and plunged the clawlike hand with precision into Cai’s side, right where the Red Cap had struck before. There was a snap as the blow struck true. Cai froze and let out a keening groan. He choked as blood began to bubble up from his mouth and dribble onto the forest floor. Face pale, his eyes widened in panic.

  “Cai!” Iain bellowed. “Come on! Fight!”

  With a shout, Cai thrust back, kicking Alan squarely in his chest. Cai bit off a shout as the claw pulled free of his side, and then he swung out backhanded with the sword, landing a solid blow with the hilt of the weapon to Alan’s temple.

  This time his body crumpled, and he stayed down for the moment. But his limbs twitched like he might get up again.

  One hand pressed hard to his side, pale and bloodied, Cai retreated. He lumbered through the forest to meet Iain and Deirdre. He was breathing hard, but he urged Iain onward with a grunt.

  The sound of guns firing grew louder around them.

  “It’s coming from the south.” Cai panted and shook his head. “It must be the spiders. We may run into them, and I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

  “The bells,” Iain said. “We can bring some out to scare away the spiders.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Cai took point again, though he was injured; Iain knew there was no arguing. He had to protect Deirdre. He couldn’t fight with her in his arms. And after the fight he just witnessed, he trusted that Cai could push through the pain to protect them if he had to.

  Deirdre…

  He looked down at her, making sure she was still conscious.

  “Deirdre—?”

  Her eyes closed, and her body went limp and heavier in his arms, her head falling against his chest.

  Iain swallowed hard, his throat aching, and tried to focus on the path ahead and putting one foot in front of the other

  Cai fell back beside him, briefly clasping his shoulder. Though the man said nothing, it was comforting nonetheless. More determined than ever, feeling the weight of Deirdre in his arms and holding her tighter, Iain prayed that she would be all right.

  And if she could still be brave, and if Cai could push on, then so could he.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As they headed northwest toward the hilly tree line and away from the military, James alternately shifted his gaze between Alvey as he pushed her chair and his mother at his side. He was certain that if he let Mum out of his sight, she would disappear again or be hurt.

  Cecil said she was safe for the moment. We’ll be safe once we get out of here, once we find Iain and Deirdre. Once we outrun the Iron Guard…

  He could not shake the insistent thought in his head that this conflict would not be over and they would not be safe until his father was stopped. Until the Winter Court was stopped. And though he wanted to run away and keep running, he wondered if they could ever rest unless this war was over.

  Great. He rolled his eyes. Now I’m sounding like Iain.

  Mum kept pace beside him, her hands gripping her skirt, keeping herself from tripping over the fabric. She caught him staring and offered him a quick smile, which James returned half-heartedly.

  Alvey’s knuckles were white as she gripped her armrests the entire time, but after a while, she let go to point to a path slightly to their right, toward the tree line. “I hear a crowd that way. Surely we shall be safer with more numbers and more muscle.”

  “Hey, Alvey,” James whispered, ducking low by her ear as not to be overheard by his mum. “I told you we’d be safe, even on our own. If anything happens, I’ll defend us.”

  Alvey ground out through gritted teeth, “Oh, I am certain you shan’t stand by uselessly and fumble with your books as you are wont to do during a crisis this time.”

  Sighing, James retreated. He had finally learned not to take the bait, and she was probably only this sassy because she was afraid. Her voice was shaking, and it lacked a little bit of its usual fierce sting.

  Maybe she’ll feel differently when she realizes what I can do now. She’ll be so impressed maybe she’ll stop teasing me and she’ll take me seriously.

  However, as they neared and the crowd came into view, Alvey’s posture went rigid again. She tilted her head to one side, her ear toward the wood, listening. Then she scrunched up her nose in disgust after taking a whiff of the air.

  “Is there something in the woods?” James fired off questions anxiously. “Is it the spiders? Have they come already? Do you think they’ll—?”

  “’Tis a faery cat following us through the woods,” Alvey stated. “We best avoid it, as they are wont to cause mischief. Fire will kill it if it comes near.” She reached down and grabbed her pack, where her explosive crystals were hidden.

  “What did you say?” Mum whipped her head around to look at the girl. “You said a faery cat?”

  “Aye.”

  James’s stomach did a curious flip as he fixed his eyes on the forest. He scanned through the dark trees for a moving shape, the illustration in his book of the massive, wild-eyed cat appearing in his mind.

  Mum grabbed his arm and tugged. “It’s… it’s him. He’s after you. We must hurry. He cannot find you.”

  They picked up their pace, soon reaching a crowd of festivalgoers, the last to leave the grounds, who were filing out down a dirt path through the woods to the parking area in a neat stream.

  Once they were slowed down by the traffic, James turned to Mum and asked, hesitant, “Mum, what d’you think would happen if the faery cat, um, found me?”

  Mum stared at him. Her brown eyes flickered with distance, like she was looking past him, far away. “He would take you from me to his horrible manor, where you would be his thrall. As I was.”

  “What… what was it like? Living there.” The moment he asked, he regretted it. Pain flickered across her face in a flinch. “Mum—?”

  “Jal, please,” she snapped. “I cannot think about that now. Do not ask me again.”

  Swallowing hard, James nodded, allowing his mother to start pushing Alvey’s chair for him while he slowed his pace with his head lowered.

  There was shouting in the woods to their right, followed by gunfire. James looked up. The crowd ahead shifted from an orderly stream to what looked like the undulating, frantic flight of birds when a hawk was nearby. There were screams, shouts of alarm, and then panic as everyone scrambled to leave.

  James sprinted forward, trying to find Alvey and Mum in the chaos. When a shrill scream came from behind him, he twisted around.

  A girl stumbled out of the thicket, red-faced, her steps staggering, and called for help. She was a faery cultist, dressed in garish clothing with fake flowers in her hair and one of her fake horns dangling off her head.

  Crouching, James rummaged through his backpack and produced one of the fire crystals; he gingerly placed it in the pocket of his jacket. He rushed toward her. She could barely walk on her own, and she threw an arm around him like he was a lifeline, her glitter-smeared face red with tears.

  “Um…” James hesitated before helping her walk, unsure of what to do with his hands, settling on grabbing her arm. “The… the army is coming this way. You should leave now. It’s this way.”

  “The army?” the girl sputtered in a thick, northern accent, half laughing, half crying. “No—I saw this great, bleedin’ cat. And it was chasing me, and… and—” She broke off in a scream, pointing to their right toward the woods behind them.

  Out of the dark woods, as if out of a fairy-tale book or perhaps a nightmare, bounded a creature that moved so lithely it hardly made a sound. The pen-and-ink illustration did not do the Cait Sidhe justice. It was a massive beast, lean and long as a panther but three times the size, with fur so black it shone blue and a patch of white on his chest. Its feet soared off the ground in a pounce, landing gracefully a few feet behind where they stood frozen.

  The beast ignored them, taking off in a flash and darting past them, a breeze whipping by them from
the speed as it did so. It was heading toward the crowd—toward Mum.

  “Stop!” James yelled desperately.

  Once the Cait Sidhe reached the edge of the crowd, instead of tearing through it like James feared, the creature jumped over them, landed, and then spun around to face the crowd, his tail twitching erratically, playfully, his pupils a wide black circle. People in the area shouted and swore and ran faster but were unharmed.

  The Cait Sidhe went around the crowd and bounded back toward them, and the cultist on James’s arm screamed and fell to the ground, covering her head. But the creature whipped past them, slowing to a walk in front of the tree line to their left, its tail swishing back and forth.

  He’s waiting for something—but what?

  Gunfire sounded, snapping James out of his wonderment. “Get up,” he told the cultist. When she stood, he nudged her toward the crowd that was still streaming out. “We have to get out of here before—”

  A group of five Iron Infantry soldiers with rifles stepped out of the forest and into the field, headed straight for the crowd. James was the only person standing between the soldiers and the civilians. The moment they appeared, Cait Sidhe let out a yowl that chilled James to his bones.

  The creature leaped at the soldiers, easily jumping over, between, and around them like a game of hopscotch, alternately swiping at their legs and sending them flailing on their backs. No matter how quick they were, they just couldn’t keep up enough to even aim at him.

  Cait Sidhe slipped back into the forest, apparently done with his play.

  A hearty, surprised laugh burst from James’s mouth. But his inexplicable surge of amusement faded when one of the soldiers got up and spotted him; it was Boyd Prance.

  “Oi!” Boyd shouted. “You there—stop now and put your hands on your head.”

  He doesn’t know it’s me yet. If he did, he’d probably just shoot.

  James backed up. But the soldiers were already on him, just yards away.

  Reaching into his pocket, he produced the fire crystal and clenched it tightly. James’s gaze flicked from the incoming soldiers to the forest, wondering if Cait Sidhe would be back and why he hadn’t taken out the soldiers or the civilians.

  “Which side are you on?” James wondered aloud in a whisper.

  A voice, both airy and smooth, low and rumbling—Cecil’s voice—whispered back in his mind with absolute clarity: “I am on no one’s side but yours and mine, James. Our side.”

  Gold eyes with slit pupils flashed in the shadowy forest, glowing through the rain and gray. And James, feeling like he could do anything, took off running, pulling the cultist along in the direction of the crowd toward Mum and Alvey and felt no fear as Boyd Prance fired his rifle.

  The shots did not impact; Cait Sidhe darted in front of the soldiers, drawing their fire away from him and running back toward the forest out of the way where he halted and stood still, waiting again.

  After pushing the cultist on, James took the crystal in his hand and skidded to a halt in the wet grass. Twisting around, he focused on the crystal and the spark inside it, pouring everything he had into it—all the anger and helpless fear in the dwarf’s cave when Boyd had beaten his brother bloody and killed a man—and then reared back and threw the explosive with a shout at the soldiers, at Boyd, as hard as he could.

  The crystal launched through the air with a light flash of magic. There was a second, a breath, and then it exploded in a flash of white light with a thunderclap of sound that smacked the air.

  The force of it knocked James on his back. He scrambled upright, then froze at the soldiers’ cries as they threw their flaming bodies to the ground. Two were on the ground already, burning but not moving.

  It was not long before many dark shapes moved in the woods, skittering across the leafy ground, drawn to the flames and the screams.

  The spiders…

  It looked as if a writhing shadow of black and brown was crawling across the ground straight toward him. The swarm of wolf-sized spiders filtered out of the woods in all directions like spilled ink, oozing between the trees. They were a mass of spindly, jerky legs attached to bulbous bodies, with so many gleaming black eyes.

  James could only gape, caught between awe and paralyzing fear.

  “What will he do next? I wait in great suspense.” Cecil’s voice slithered through his mind again.

  With sudden resolve, James rummaged through his pack for the other crystals.

  Then, with the cacophony of spider legs thumping against the ground urging him, James placed the crystals on the ground in a line and then ran from the field to the woods. Sweating, breathless, and determined, he focused on the crystals, on the magic he had placed inside them, and on the spark of flame.

  There could not be an angry burst of fire; it had to burn slow and steady to keep the spiders at bay and to let the stragglers escape. He thought of how Cecil had described the magic to him and how he needed to use his intent and will.

  Slow, steady flames, slowly building, burning hotter over time…

  A warm, restless energy filled his chest. It was a familiar sensation, like his desire to prove himself building and burning inside him.

  As he fed that energy into the crystals, they first glowed orange, smoked, and then burst into licking flames. But the flames weren’t high enough. He had to feed them more of his intent.

  James’s energy went into each crystal, like candles blown out in a dark room one by one; his breath went with it. As his vision darkened, he fell forward onto his knees on the ground, his head spinning. Then he gasped as heat from the wall of flames washed over him.

  I’ve done it.

  “Easy, James… Don’t give all of yourself to it. Keep some of that fire. You’ll need it.”

  James’s vision recovered, and he held his head as pain burst through his skull. In front of him, the crystals burned, their flames joining to form a steady wall of fire a foot high. The incoming spiders slowed, shrieking, and backed up from the fire.

  The Cait Sidhe strode up to him, the beast’s broad and sloping shoulders rising and falling like a tiger’s as it stalked prey. The black fur shone blue in the flames.

  James rose unsteadily to his feet, weakened by the magic and what he put into it. As he stumbled forward with a groan, he dazedly caught himself against the creature’s back, grabbing fistfuls of fur. The Moorland Beast nudged him in the chest with its giant head, pushing him upright again.

  “Come with me, and I can show you more. Magic you’ve never heard of and never could imagine. Creatures unknown by man. And wonders… such wonders.”

  James jolted. As he recovered, he looked from the Cait Sidhe to the leaving crowd of people that were nearly out of the field to safety.

  “Mum…,” James whispered. “I’ve… I’ve got to get to Mum.”

  Then he turned and left, not fearing any attack from behind. As he ran to find Mum and Alvey, he did not look back, and he did not fear the Moorland Beast.

  He knew the Cait Sidhe’s weakness.

  It was him.

  When James finally caught up to Alvey and Mum, he was relieved to find them safe and unharmed; they were out of the festival grounds and in a clearing in the woods with a few others, including some of the militia. Alvey was busy reorganizing the contents of her pack, and she merely mumbled a greeting when he arrived and checked on her. But there were people missing.

  Deirdre and Iain weren’t back yet. Neither was Cai, if he’s even still around.

  James paced around before sitting down against a great oak tree at the clearing’s edge, tilting his head back, all his thoughts on his brother and Deirdre and how they’d left things.

  I lied to Deirdre, and now she hates me, and she thinks I’m a bad friend. And did I even say goodbye to Iain? Did I wish him luck? He doesn’t even know that I can take care of myself now or that I’m sorry for not forgiving him. Things were just starting to be okay between us…

  James winced and rubbed his forehead. A du
ll pain still throbbed behind his eyes. He wondered when it would go away and if it was a side effect of the magic.

  Mum plopped down beside him and leaned forward to meet his eyes, putting an arm around his shoulders. “I was worried, Jal, when we got separated back there.” Then, with a faint smile, she added, “And that Alvey girl was asking for your whereabouts.”

  James wanted to grin but couldn’t manage it. He pulled at some grass beside him, saying, “I’m sorry I worried you, Mum. But I was okay, and… and you don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

  “Of course I worry about you, Jal. As your mother, I cannot stop.”

  He kept his head low. “But that’s why you left. Because of me. Because you were worried about me. And—” His voice wavered, and he swallowed hard. “And it’s my fault that you went through everything.”

  Mum took his face in her hands, gently turning it so he looked at her. “Jal, you must know I would do anything for you. It is because I love you so dearly, you goose.”

  “I know, but…”

  “I would do it again in a heartbeat, Jal, if only it hadn’t been for nothing.” Mum dug her fingers into her knees under her skirt. “I left you and your brother, and it was all for nothing now because that monster is still after you.”

  Mum tried to hide her tears, glancing away and wiping them.

  “I’d do anything for you too, Mum,” he said. “Anything.”

  They both looked up as a militiaman walked over. “You should stay away from the trees,” he told them. “The spiders are distracted by the Iron Guard at the moment, but they may head this way. Alone, they aren’t much of a threat. But together… they’re trouble.”

  The militiaman beckoned for them to follow him, and Mum obliged. James hung back a little. He glanced at the trees, his mind whirring. If Iain and Deirdre didn’t come back with the bells soon, then it would be up to him to do something.

  I was able to stop them with the fire crystals once, but I’m nearly out of them… I don’t know enough about magic yet. Not enough to protect us or break Mum’s deal…