Hidden Coven- The Complete Series, page 8
Something had swept through the cottage, killing them quickly and painfully. Quinn moved from body to body, checking for life, but I knew he would find none. There was no aether left here.
Except…
A tiny spark tugged at my will. It didn’t feel like any aether I’d sensed before, but it was definitely magic. Could someone still be alive? I couldn’t pinpoint the source. My eyes swept the room. I wished I could control this sensate thing better. Stepping over a body, I moved into the heart of the cottage. Magic pulled at me. In the hallway leading to the kitchen, I found him.
Aidan. The teenaged barn hand sat with his back against the wall. I thought he must be the source of aether, but as I crouched, I knew he was gone. His eyes focused on nothing. I touched his neck. No pulse.
But there was magic here.
I glanced down at the thing Aidan clutched in his lap—a box of dull grey metal, lead or pewter, inscribed with runes.
It was open.
I peered into the blackness it held. Doom lived in that box. I could feel it as easily as I could feel the heat of fire.
“Quinn!” My voice strangled in my throat. Blackness swelled, a miasmic shadow of hate and fear. A shadow slipped from the box like black oil. It rose. It shaped. It manifested!
Seven feet tall, it loomed over me, body shifting and coiling like a diaphanous serpent. Yellow eyes bored out of an ancient face, craggy and twisted. Opening a massive jaw, it hissed. The sound ripped at my soul. Clawed hands circled my throat, its touch cold and hard, despite its ghostly translucence. I choked. My hands raked through it, but caught nothing.
It could touch me, but I couldn’t touch it! My mind whirled with fear. I couldn’t fight it!
Through the hazy mist, I saw Quinn launch an attack.
“Wraith!” he shouted, but his strikes had as little effect as mine. I struggled and kicked. The creature held me against the wall, its grip firm on my throat. A spiked tail rose above it and plunged down into my chest.
I gasped. The spike bit through skin, muscle and bone, leaving no mark as it struck my wellspring. Pain obliterated all thought. I felt it sucking. A repulsive face leered into mine. It drank. My aether slipped away with every sip.
My own foolishness had nearly depleted my wellspring once before. Now, this hideous creature would take my aether for its own, twisting all that was good and pure in me to its purposes. And when my wellspring was dry, I’d die.
No.
I pushed past the pain and looked into the creature. Really looked. I saw how it killed. Like a leech, it hooked into my aether with tiny barbs of magic, not unlike the tendrils that had reached for me from the core.
Abilene’s lessons had taught me the shape of my aether, its boundaries and its depth. I reached for it.
With a push, I forced my aether outward. It surged. The creature flinched. I pressed on. Power flowed through my veins. My magic was my will. And my will would not be overcome. I shaped my aether into a blade and sheared the wraith from me.
It shrieked as its hold broke free. But I refused to let it run. My aether knife drove deep into its heart, pushing, digging, grinding until it found a wellspring.
Then I drank.
How do you like that, you bastard!
Magic flowed into me, murky shadows mixing with my own blue light. I thought the wraith’s darkness would overpower me. The giddy lure of evil enticed me. All magic was alluring. The feeling of rapture could be addictive, and in that moment, I understood how the vestals let the core overwhelm them. It would be easy to give in.
But not today. Today, I wouldn’t bumble into magic blindly. With a push of my will, I forced my aether to bloom. It circled the foul magic within me and snuffed out the darkness.
The wraith screamed and shattered into fragments of shadow that dissolved in the night.
I stood gasping before Quinn’s astonished face.
“How the hells?” He shook his head. “Never mind. We have to go. There may be more.”
He reached down and shut the grey box before more wraiths escaped.
“Hold this.” He shoved it into my hands. I tried not to look at Aidan’s dead face. There would be time later to understand and mourn.
A scream shook the night. We ran outside. Shrieks of pure terror echoed through the darkness. I stumbled after Quinn, up the path leading to the core, fearing what we would find, but more afraid not to go.
In the clearing between the cairns, six more wraiths writhed in the shadows.
Connection
The guards were already dead. Fear marked their faces, fear at the shock of having their aether sucked away. The wraiths shifted. No legs broke the swirling mass of incorporeal shadow. They floated over the ground, huddling together like a pool of darkness. Waiting for what?
Another wraith pulled the last vestal from inside the core’s house. The big witch fought the insubstantial grip of the monster. He thrashed and kicked but his blows had no effect.
“Can you…” The ground shook, cutting off Quinn’s question. I grabbed his arm to ride out the wave.
The core. Without handlers, it was becoming unstable. Soon it wouldn’t have enough power to fuel the ward. And when the ward fell, whatever was waiting outside—whoever had sent the wraiths—would have free rein inside the coven.
“Can you stop them?” Quinn whispered.
“No.” I had little idea how I’d beaten the first one, but I knew I couldn’t take on seven.
The last vestal’s face went slack as the wraith reached into his heart and tore out his magic.
The night fell silent. Even Siranda was quiet. Had they killed her?
I edged around the clearing to get a look inside her cairn. Bad move. The wraiths turned as one mind. Yellow eyes glared at us from within black faces. Quinn gripped my hand, pulling me away, but it was too late. The wraiths came at us.
“Get back!” A light flared. Jane and Abilene appeared from the shadows. Jane wielded her staff that glowed eerily blue. She raised it above her head and light blazed. The wraiths recoiled, their insubstantial forms slinking together like one inky shadow.
“Get back!” Jane yelled again, but the monsters held their line. The ground shook, tossing me against Quinn.
“Give me the receptacle,” Jane urged. I stared at her blankly and she grabbed the box from my hands. She opened it and I cringed, expecting more monsters to slip out. But the blue light from her staff bathed the box and I recognized that pure glow for what it was: Jane’s aether, magic stronger and purer than any I’d ever sensed, and I understood why Jane was the high priestess of Hidden Coven.
“I call on you, spirits of darkness. Hear my call.” Her voice rose with authority. “I call on you, specters of evil. I know your true name, Korlogorn, servants of Kororaeth!” My flesh crawled at the dark power in those names.
“I call you, Korlogorn. Come!” The wraiths shrank. The black misty bodies flowed toward the box and disappeared inside. An unearthly moan filled the night like the rumble of distant thunder. Jane slammed the box shut on the last wraith. Her staff winked out, leaving us in total darkness. She huffed out a breath and teetered sideways. Abilene caught her.
The moaning continued. It wasn’t the wraiths, but the core groaning with the effort to connect to the ley-line without the help of vestals. Siranda answered the call with her own high-pitched cry.
“The core,” Abilene said. “It’s going to crash!” Behind her, other witches gathered, pale faces reflecting fear in the moonlight.
The buzzing sensation I felt near the ward washed over me. The sky pressed down, robbing me of oxygen. The ward was coming down, and Koro, the wraith master, would be free to attack the coven.
“Where are the other vestals?” Jane snapped.
“Dead.” Quinn’s face was grim. “There’s no one left to connect to the core.”
It took months of training to form a bond with the core. And months more to learn the restraint needed to keep your aether separate from the thirst of the machine.
But it called to me. Just like the first time I saw it, the core wanted me. I stumbled across the ground, tripping over a body. My heart beat erratically, trying to connect to the unnatural rhythm. I gasped, choked and fell into the cairn.
Above me the massive heart pulsed, purple and crimson. Thick coils reached, searching for me. I closed my eyes and waited for their bite.
Quinn jerked me back. Behind him, Jane and Abilene crowded in the doorway.
“No!” he said. “You can’t do this. It will kill you.”
“And if the ward fails?” I asked through gritted teeth. “How many more will die?” The pressure of the cracking ward pushed on my lungs. I needed the bite of the core to breathe again.
Quinn studied me. Seconds passed like falling stones. His tight brow softened. There was no other way. And he nodded.
“Remember how you drank from the Lady’s well?” he said. “Connect the core to the ley-line the same way. I will help you, if I can.”
My breath came quickly, in stilted gasps. The core wanted me. I reached my aether toward the coiling tentacles. They latched onto my head, throat and chest, wrapping me in need.
And they drank.
Just like the wraiths, they siphoned my wellspring, but I felt no darkness in the core’s need. It was hungry in the way an infant cried for milk—a monstrous, inconsolable infant. My blood thrummed to its tune. My breath was no longer my own, but a slave to the core’s need. I panicked. Power flowed from me at an alarming rate. I’d be dead long before I could figure out how to connect the core to the ley-line.
I fell. My hands scraped at the hard ground. In the garden, with Quinn as my guide, it had been easy to find the earth’s lifeblood, but I couldn’t reach it now.
The core pierced me with a thousand invisible needles, shredding my soul with its need for aether.
The room spun. The core drank. I couldn’t think, could barely hold up my head. My wellspring drained and my heart slowed as the core consumed me. Its sucking breaths were long and languid as if it relished the last drops of my aether.
Oh, gods, it hurts.
I choked. My throat filled with bile.
A shock of magic jolted up my arm. Aether—soothing cool aether—washed through me. I recognized the taste of it.
Quinn.
His hand clamped mine. I forced my eyes up to his savage gaze. He was feeding me his aether. One bitterly delicious drop at a time, Quinn poured his soul into me.
I would not waste it.
Struggling against the pain and weakness in my limbs, I pressed my free hand to the earth. The ley-line ran directly under the cairn. I could feel its force, like a rushing current beneath my fingers. If I could reach it, the core would have its feast of magic, enough aether to fuel the ward and replenish mine. So close, yet I couldn’t push through the rock separating me from this life-giving current.
Another jolt of magic surged through me. Abilene held Quinn’s hand. Another jolt. A third witch held hers. We were a human chain of aether, souls linked arm in arm.
I pushed magic into the earth, shoving the insidious tentacles from the core with it.
Eat this!
My aether screamed as I flung myself through rock to the ley-line. I plunged into the pool, the ultimate source of the gods’ water, and it bathed me in light, power and healing.
The core drank deeply. We were all one: me, the core, the ward, the ley-line and the chain of witches who had come to my aid. I could feel each life force and knew that even when I finally let the link drop, we would still be connected.
And outside this chain of united power, I felt Koro raging at his failure.
Revelation
The Java Jump was quiet. From the street, I glanced through the window. I wanted to meet Quinn on neutral ground, and the café was three doors down from my Woolery.
He’d called me that morning, after a two-week silence. Two weeks since the meltdown at the coven. In the quiet afternoons, while I restocked shelves or filed paperwork, I could almost believe that extraordinary world of the Hidden Coven—and the striking Quinn Mason—didn’t really exist. Almost.
He waited at one of the round tables, a cup of coffee before him. Out of place in this ordinary setting, his shoulders were too broad for the cramped space, and his long legs didn’t fold neatly under the small table. The three-day stubble was back, and it looked good on him. He saw me through the window, and a slow smile spread across his face. My heart winced a little.
Air-conditioning hit me with welcome relief as I walked in.
“Hey,” I said, sitting across from him.
“Hey.” Luckily, the waitress saved us from more scintillating repartee. I ordered a cappuccino and Quinn asked for a refill of his black coffee. I knew he wasn’t a cream-and-sugar guy.
I had a dozen questions about what had happened at the coven and what was still happening to me. The core had torn open my well of aether. I saw the whole world differently now. Every living thing was just a bundle of raw magic. Magic that I could taste, hear and smell. Magic I could plunder. It wasn’t a mantle I wore comfortably.
I’d learned a few things before leaving the coven. Aidan had brought the wraiths inside the ward. His sister confirmed that he’d been acting out since their mother’s death a few months before. She was a vestal, another casualty of the core, and Aidan had taken it badly. While in town, he’d been approached by someone with a plan to bring down the ward. For the good of the coven, he’d said. He’d given Aidan the box of wraiths, directing him to take out all the vestals and start fires in the village. Quinn suspected this contact was Koro’s agent. Whether the agent expected Aidan to live through these tasks was unclear.
I had a hard time connecting the lanky teen who had helped me in the barn with the traitor and murderer.
Eighteen witches died in the attack, including all the vestals. I’d stayed linked to the core for over an hour while Jane and Gavin found the novice vestals and brought them to relieve me. I hoped they were well-trained enough to resist the lure of the core.
Siranda, the seer, had not been harmed, though she had drawn nothing but black shadows on her walls for days afterward.
All this, I’d learned before Quinn blindfolded me and drove me home.
Now, he watched me while I sorted questions in my head. The awkward silence perched like a third, very large guest at our table.
Well, this is fun.
“How’s Abilene?” I asked at the same moment he said, “I miss you.”
More awkward silence. I tried to smile but couldn’t hold it steady. His hand covered mine for an instant, then he pulled away as the waitress shoved a cappuccino in front of me and refilled his coffee.
“Abilene’s fine.” He stared into his mug, gripping it with both hands. “What you did…that was very brave.”
Brave or stupid, I wasn’t sure which. At least he didn’t call me reckless.
“What were those creatures that Aidan let loose?”
“The Korlogorn,” Quinn said. “They were once witches that Koro enslaved and turned into wraiths. They are his assassins. No one has ever been able to kill one before. Even Jane can only banish them from this dimension.”
I had killed a wraith. It seemed impossible, but at the time, I had simply known what to do. Drinking the creature’s aether had seemed so simple…so natural. Quinn watched me as his words registered. Once again, I felt like a bug under a microscope.
“Are you ever going to tell me who Koro is?” We’d had this conversation before, and it hadn’t gone well. Jane kept her secrets close, and as head of the coven’s security, Quinn mostly agreed with this tactic.
“You can’t keep me in the dark. Some big-bad failed to take the coven because I was rash enough to throw myself at the core. If he knows this, if Koro has other spies in the coven, I’m a sitting target. But I don’t even know what he looks like.”
Was he another witch? Something worse? Could he find me again?
“Koro is…” Quinn sighed and all the fight left him. “Koro is a demon. Or the closest thing to a demon that can survive in our world.”
I sipped my cappuccino, digesting this. I’d need more caffeine.
“I don’t know what he looks like,” Quinn said. “Only Jane has seen him in his true form, and she won’t talk about it. He can’t manifest in this world. Not without some really messy magic.”
“That’s good then. He can’t hurt us, unless…”
“Unless he finds a mortal agent to do his bidding. We think this is who approached Aidan.”
“And if he’d tapped into the ley-line through the core, would that have been enough power to make him manifest?”
“Possibly. I think it takes more than power. There is a ritual, something about blood of the seed. The books are vague.”
They always were. I wondered what Miss Abernathy had to say about demons.
“But he has a taste for aether,” Quinn said. “He lusts for it. For years, we heard rumors about him attacking other covens and drinking the witches dry. Some he turns into the Korlogorn. Others he kills outright. I’m not sure which is the worse fate. That’s why Jane insisted on the ward. But now he’s found us.”
“Will you move the coven?”
Quinn shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s no easy job to move all those families. And we have the ley-line. It might be time to stop hiding.”
“Can you fight him?”
“Maybe.” Quinn smiled sadly.
A new thought struck me cold.
“Is it possible Koro’s agent was in Ashlet because of me? You said he’s attracted to aether. Could he have sensed my magic?” I thought of all the times I’d let magic fly in recent months, oblivious to its effects on others. Had my recklessness led Koro to the coven?
