Ascent: Book 3 of the Scorched Trilogy

by Lizzy Prince

  “When this is done. We’re going out.”

  “On a date?” I asked, feeling a flush of warmth work its way over my skin.

  There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Yes.”

  He launched himself off the bed and I lay like a starfish feeling breathless and lightheaded.

  “Get up lazy bones. Time to get going,” Munro shouted back at me from the other room, and I chuckled quietly, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time.

  Chapter 17

  It didn’t take much for us to gather our stuff and get on the road. It wasn’t like we had a mountain of luggage with us. We hadn’t even intended to spend the night. But circumstances had forced our hand. Much like most of what had happened to me over the past few months.

  I’d been too preoccupied the night before to show Munro the goblet and he’d been too worked up to even ask about it. But as we were gathering up our things and getting ready to leave, we both stood next to the table in the dining room contemplating the wooden box that held the goblet inside.

  The dark wood had my rune carved into the top of the box, the one that apparently represented the sisters.

  “What happened when you disappeared?” His eyes never left the box as though mesmerized by it.

  “I had to face my fears.” I shrugged as if it had been no big thing.

  Munro shifted, turning to face me and peeling his eyes away from the box. His brows were furrowed, a little crease between his eyes the only indication that he was worried. “Did you face them?”

  I licked my lips, wishing I had a big glass of orange juice or something similarly sweet. “I recognized what my greatest fears are. But also, that I can’t control what other people do. You know. Free will and all.”

  “It has it’s pros and cons,” Munro said with a small smile that faded quickly.

  “It does. I want to keep all of my family and friends safe, but I can’t lock everyone away for the rest of your lives.” I sighed, reaching out and touching my fingers to the wood of the box and feeling a surge of power that had me pulling back. This thing was kind of scary.

  “Do you want to see it?” I waved a hand over the box. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping he’d say. If he said yes, it would give me the excuse to take it out and examine it, but I also hoped he might say no. There was something about the magic emanating from the box that was calling to me. It had a pull that enticed, saying pick me up, hold me, use me. And part of me wanted to, but I was also a little creeped out that an inanimate object had that kind of energy and persuasive power.

  Munro frowned and screwed up his face. “Not really.”

  I sensed his conflict with the cauldron was different than mine. This was a symbol of power, something his mother had craved. If I ever needed proof that they were very different—which I didn’t—it was staring me in the face.

  “Can you feel it?” I questioned as I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes.

  He stared at the box as if it held all the answers to life. Maybe it did. It was a tool of ancient magical fairy power. “I think we’ll need to make sure we hide these again after we take care of Cailleach. They aren’t meant for this world. I can feel the power, but it’s not like it has an inherent sense of good or evil.”

  He paused as he found my eyes, shaking his head as if working through his thoughts. “It’s just full of power. And in the hands of someone good, it could do amazing things. But in the wrong hands, it could do horrible things.” He looked a little sick.

  Neither one of us said anything as I peered back down at the box, thinking about what he’d just said and how different our lives would have been if others had chosen to do good things with their magic, instead of horrible things.

  “We should get going.” I finally broke the silence, scooping up the wooden box with a reluctant sigh.

  Staying in this little house for the night had given me the chance to catch my breath. We’d been sprinting for days, running from one place to the next on our hunt, and I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been wound. Our overnight had been unexpected but now that we were leaving, I realized how necessary it had been. It was the calm before the storm, a brief reprieve from the outside world.

  I smiled a little as I thought about waking up in Munro’s arms. That had definitely been an incredible feeling. A little pang of regret that we couldn’t stay longer hit me, but the real world couldn’t wait.

  In the middle of the dining table was a shallow crystal bowl with a few brochures focused on the local sites and a pile of little boxes. I picked one up and saw that it was a box of matches, the little wooden sticks clicking as I gave it a shake. Smiling, I pocketed the matches, my little souvenir of our first night together.

  “I need to call Maggie at some point today,” I told Munro once we were settled in the car. I held the box with the lia fáil on my lap, feeling like it should be in a lock box or safe or something more secure than just my hands.

  “Use my phone whenever you want.” Munro pulled it out of his hoodie pocket and tossed it in the center console between us.

  “Thanks. I’ll wait until it’s a little later in the day back home. Maggie will definitely yell if I call this early.”

  A smile curved the edges of Munro’s lips, and the murmured voices of the radio turned down low soothed me as we drove through the countryside. I ran my hands over the symbol carved on the top of the box. It was the same mark that graced the inside of my arm, and I didn’t know if it was all in my head or if the magic was the reason, but I sensed the cup inside the box. It hummed and buzzed within its container. It was meant to be enticing, saying use me, feel my power. There was a thread of malevolence to that power as well. But if I thought about it, that was always the way with power, wasn’t it?

  I mean, if Spider-Man had taught me nothing, at least I knew that with great power came great responsibility. And I knew this was a great power. I just hoped we would be able to use it well.

  “How do you think we are supposed to use the lia fáil to stop Cailleach?” I asked Munro, turning to look at him as he drove. The car windows were fogged up a little, and it was misting rain outside. The wipers were making a quiet squeak as they scraped across the windshield every so often.

  “I honestly have no idea. I think we’re due to have a nice long chat with Roark when we get back and pray to every God under the sun that he knows something.”

  I nodded in agreement and wanted to ask him more about how Roark came into their lives when something on the radio caught my attention. Leaning forward, I turned the knob so I could hear what was being said.

  “Massive death toll… The HPSC is asking citizens to avoid travel in or around Kildare and surrounding areas. Neither the source, nor the specific strain of the illness has been identified as of yet, but authorities are working to uncover this information. For now, it appears to be traveling south. For a full list of impacted cities, we encourage listeners to visit the HPSC’s website.”

  Goosebumps covered my skin, and I felt clammy, like I was getting sick just from listening to the report. We’d missed the introduction to the story, not that it mattered. I knew it wasn't some mutated virus killing people. But those people weren’t catching the plague or some animal flu.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  Munro had slowed while we listened to the report. But now his knuckles were white as he clutched the steering wheel, and he sped up, probably feeling the same sense of urgency that was making me feel jittery.

  “It sounds like she’s making her way south,” he said through gritted teeth.

  My own hands tightened around the carved wooden box in my lap as desperation clawed at my insides. What had we done? What had we allowed to be unleashed?

  “We’re only ten minutes from Kildare. I want to stop there.”

  Fear spiked in my stomach, and I bit at my lips nervously. What could we possibly do if we saw her?

  “Okay.” I
tried to put some strength into the word, but my voice broke.

  I hid my face, gathering my hair up into a ponytail as an excuse not to look at Munro. I didn’t want to show him how freaked out I was. My magic was still somewhat of an enigma to me. I didn’t fully understand the capacity of my powers and how I could use them. We’d determined that I had access to all four elements, five if you counted soul magic. And in theory, I should be able to control earth, air, water and fire. But every time I tried to use my magic on one of the elements, it misbehaved and did something I hadn't intended. Something odd and unexpected. It didn’t do much for my magical confidence.

  I had no frame of reference for how busy Kildare usually was, but there wasn’t a soul in sight when we drove into town. Maybe everyone had fled or were locked up tight in their houses. It was cold so it was possible no one would have been outside anyway. But there was an eerie foreboding to the quiet, like Munro and I were the last two people on earth.

  Munro drove slowly through town, and I didn’t know what he was looking for or hoping to find, but his face became more pinched and angrier the longer we drove. After it seemed like we’d done a loop around the entire city, he pulled over into the lot of a small gas station. It looked like a family owned business and if it was any normal circumstance, I would have thought they’d closed because it was Christmas Eve. But I didn't think that was why they were shut down now. No, they were running from the plague that was Cailleach.

  “I need some air,” Munro stated roughly as he yanked on the parking break and got out of the car. Leaving it running with the heat blasting over me. I didn’t want to get out of the warmth, but I also didn’t want Munro to think he should just bottle all his shit up and keep it to himself.

  I got out and circled the car to stand by his side. He was looking down the street, his hands on his head, like a massive headache bloomed there. We were close enough that I could feel the heat from his body, but I kept my hands stuck under my armpits trying to keep them relatively warm.

  “We’re going to stop her, Munro.” I looked at him as I spoke, but his eyes were distant, lost down the road, seeing nothing.

  “Munro.” I pressed one of my hands against his stomach, grasping the fabric of his sweatshirt. He blinked a few times like he had just realized I was speaking to him. When he looked at me, the pain and frustration in his eyes nearly buckled my knees.

  “My mother did this. She freed a monster. She was a monster. And we could have stopped her. Should have stopped her.” There was a plea in his eyes, a desperate need for me to understand.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face against his chest. His arms were still over his head, but they slowly lowered to my back, pulling me in closer.

  “How were we supposed to stop her, Munro? Were we supposed to kill her? Is that who we are? We can keep looking back and point out all of the things we screwed up or the poor choices we made, but it’s not going to change where we’re at right now. Stop blaming yourself for not properly fixing a problem that you didn’t create.”

  His arms squeezed tighter around me, and his breath gushed out in a relieved sigh. One hand smoothed over the back of my head, brushing over my hair and for a moment I forgot where we were. The momentary peace was shattered by a screech that pierced the air. All I could think was that there must really be banshees in Ireland because nothing else could have explained that noise.

  Both of our heads shot up and turned in the direction of the awful shriek. Down the street, not more than a hundred yards away from us, was Cailleach. My mouth tasted like ash, and fear made my hearing fade in and out until only the sound of my heartbeat remained in my ears. She’d found clothing because she no longer wore the almost non-existent tatters of clothing she’d been wearing when Hattie had brought her up from the earth. Now she had on a pair of dark pants and a sweater, and it was so incongruous with this beast who was decimating the countryside that I almost laughed. The clothing hung on her small frame, and her hair was a tangled, dirty mess. But she had more hair now then she’d had just a few days ago.

  She’d been a mummified shell of a human then. Now, she looked almost rejuvenated. Her skin still had holes, and her eyes had the milky quality of someone with a cataract. But the rest of her looked normal, human, and not recently resurrected. She approached us faster than should have been possible, and it took me way too long to realize that she was using magic.

  Before I could blink, she was in front of me, her hand was wrapping around my throat and hauling me off the ground. She made a punching motion toward Munro, sending him flying through the air and landing with a thud that made me sick. I tried to cry out, but Cailleach’s unnaturally strong hold was closing off my throat. I could barely breathe, no less make a sound. The tips of my toes trailed the ground, and I kicked out, trying to connect with any part of her body as I clawed at the hand gripping me.

  “Sister.” She sniffed me like she recognized Áine’s scent. I had no idea if having part of her soul inside of me made it so that I smelled like her. Or if it was the magic or part of Áine’s essence she was scenting.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she purred, her voice rough and rusty like nails. Her insides must have been just as decomposed as her outsides, and it sounded like she hadn’t fully recovered her voice yet.

  “Did you think to stop me again?” Those milky eyes narrowed as her fingers pressed tighter to my throat. The edges of my vision swam with little sparks as I fought to stay conscious.

  Cailleach’s other hand wrapped around the necklace that had been my mother’s. The charm that represented the magic of the two sisters. The chain heated around my neck, and Cailleach yanked, the necklace biting into my skin as she tore it off me.

  “You wear this like a banner when it is a symbol of deception. Of your abandonment of your family for a pathetic tryst.” She held up the charm for me to see before she threw it on the ground like it was a disgusting piece of garbage.

  Anger exploded inside of me. I knew I wasn’t really her sister, and she wasn’t talking about my relationship with Munro, but it felt close enough. Her disgusted dismissal of her sister’s love sickened me, plus I was pretty pissed that she’d ripped my necklace off me.

  Fighting the only way I could think of, my fingernails scratched at the skin of her hand, and it flaked off way too easily. But she still held my throat in a crushing grip. I was going to die. The world narrowed to a tiny pin prick in my vision but like a slap to my face, I remembered I had magic too. I pulled at the sparks, commanding them to slam into Cailleach and was amazed when they obeyed, throwing her away from me like I’d flicked away a bug.

  I landed roughly on the ground, my knees and palms grinding into the rough ground. I didn’t even have a moment to look for Munro, to make sure he was okay, before Cailleach was back on her feet, long black her flying wildly around her body as she squatted on the ground before slowly standing up.

  “Not so helpless then.” She spit at me. “But you never were one to use everything at your fingertips.” A cruel smile split her face, and then she lifted her hands to the sky, throwing her head back with a vile laugh. Clouds gathered above her, swirling like a newly formed tornado, and lightning blazed down. I only just managed to jump out of the way when another bolt sizzled through the sky and crashed into the cement where my feet had been only moments before.

  The wind flung my hair around my face, and I desperately hoped I didn’t die because my damned hair blinded me.

  “Or maybe your little lover should be the one to die first. After all, this was all his fault.” Cailleach moved toward Munro’s crumbled body. I could see him moving, trying to get back up, but he’d obviously been stunned and was dazed as he tried to stand.

  Seeing her stalk toward him, something snapped inside of me. I lunged for the gas pump and pulled out the handle, flipping a little switch and thanking the spirit of Christmas that it wasn’t a pay before use pump. Without another thought, I pressed the button and sprayed the g
as at Cailleach, who stopped with an angry scream. She was already coated as I let off the trigger and dropped the pump. Digging my hand into my pocket to grab the book of matches I’d taken from the little house we’d rented the night before.

  My hands were shaking so badly as I opened the little box that half of the sticks tumbled out, making clicking sounds as they clattered to the ground. I managed to get a match out and lit it on the first strike. Before I could even think about what I was doing, I tossed it at Cailleach, and she went up in flames

  Her screams would haunt me for the rest of my life. They weren’t just screams of pain, but pure unadulterated rage. I scooped up my necklace and ran to Munro’s side and helped him as he stumbled to get to his feet. With my arm around his waist, I hurried him to the car, grateful it was still running. I dumped him in the passenger seat and climbed over him, not even willing to waste the time it would take to go around to the driver’s side. I threw it in gear and hauled ass out of the gas station lot, gunning the engine until we were out of town.

  “I have no idea if we are going the right way, but I’m getting as much distance between us and that evil witch as I possibly can.” My words came out in a pant, and I realized I was hyperventilating.

  My hands were shaking, and my throat ached where she’d tried to choke the life out of me. The smell of gas was in my nostrils, and I couldn’t tell if it was on my hands or if the smell was lingering because I’d set someone on fire. Holy Dante and all his levels of hell. What had I just done? I’d just finished telling Munro we weren’t the kind of people who killed. Then I turned around and doused someone in gas and flicked a match at them. You know, like a freaking sociopath.

  “Hey, get out of your head. I can feel the blame and guilt practically vibrating off of you.” Munro groaned as he moved his head to look at me.

  I dared to take my eyes off the road for a second to make sure he was okay. There was blood on the side of his face, and his jaw looked swollen, but other than that he seemed okay. At least, from what I could tell.