Becoming Crone, page 21
Overhead, the charred tree sagged beneath the water raining down on it. I reached up with my good hand to support it. The water had reached my shoulders, and my feet lifted from the floor. I was floating now, and a new panic stirred in me. It was echoed in the voices from the great hall that no longer chanted but shouted instead. The water must have reached them, too.
Abruptly, the filaments dropping from the ceiling vanished, but water continued to gush from ceiling and walls. My head bumped against the branches sheltering me. They parted and slipped under my arms to hold me above the flood—but not above the fear threatening to drown me just as surely as the water would.
I had no Keven to talk me through releasing the magick I’d called. No Lucan to reassure me. There was only me. Me and the chanters and—
Braden.
The thought of my grandson brought a sudden clarity with it. The monster still held him, and if I didn’t save him, he would die.
Because of me.
What do you feel? Keven’s voice whispered through my memory.
Petrified, of course. And sad, and guilty, and—
But not rooted.
Not hot.
Not prickly.
Fluid. I felt fluid. Like I was made of water. Like I could feel it in each and every one of my cells, and in every molecule of the world surrounding me, every atom. Like—
My feet bumped against the floor. The tree withdrew its branches from beneath my arms and drooped beside me. I’d done it. I’d let go of water, just as I’d released air and earth, and—
A roar came from the front of the house. It was unlike any animal I had ever heard, either in person or on film. And as exhausted, soaked, and burnt to a crisp as I was, it spurred me into motion. I staggered through the kitchen toward the garden door, clutching at the fire-scorched, sodden wall. If I could avoid the Mages chanting in the entry, maybe I could get to Braden without giving up the pendant after all. The roar became a rending and tearing of wood, and still following at my side, the tree branch trembled. Fear and pain rolled off it, mingling again with my own.
Even if I did avoid the Mages, this wouldn’t be easy.
The door between kitchen and garden stood wide, and together the tree branch and I slipped through it. I stopped dead in my tracks. Beneath the full moon, the forest beyond the garden had been destroyed, trees broken and uprooted and tossed about like sticks, great swaths of it flattened as far as the moonlight could illuminate. Ruin didn’t begin to describe it.
My linden tree’s pain became an agonized grief that almost brought me to my knees. I took a great, sobbing breath and fought through it. Pushed it away.
No time.
“Stay,” I rasped at the tree. Not waiting to see if it obeyed, I staggered to the edge of the garden, which had turned to a sea of mud. My calling of water, it seemed, had gone beyond the walls of the—I flinched mid-thought as lighting split the night sky. Thunder snarled on its heels.
Or maybe I’d done something else.
I slogged and slid my way past Keven’s ruined herb beds, through the gate, and around the corner toward the front of the house. I needed to be quick. Needed to find the monster and—
I stumbled to a halt and gazed up in horror at the mountain towering over me. It was at least ten feet tall and built like—well, a mountain. With granite contours not unlike Keven’s carved, bunched muscles, it had hands the size of giant boulders, patches covered in sparse fur, an elongated face with a dog-like muzzle and beady eyes, and—
And oh hell, were those bloodstains on its teeth?
I wanted to cry.
My charred arm and leg throbbed with pain, I was exhausted beyond anything I had ever thought possible, my muscles were seized with cold from the water, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the spot, curl into a ball, and howl like a baby.
Lightning flared again, backlighting the mountain.
I stared at it. Beady eyes stared back at me. Then it threw back its head and screamed, a hoarse, raw sound that seemed to go on forever, rolling across the remains of the forest and mingling with the thunder.
The cry ended at last, and the mountain’s eyes fixed on me again—just as my own gaze found the straggly group at the edge of the lawn where the entrance to the path had once been. Paul, Natalie, Braden, Kate Abraham, Keven. My heart leapt and plunged almost in the same instant.
All here, yes.
And all vulnerable, all in imminent danger, all wholly my responsibility. I wondered for an instant where Lucan was, but decided it was best that he wasn’t here. If I was going to hand over the pendant, I didn’t want him to see it—or to interfere as I thought he might. Whether he liked it or not, the decision was mine and mine alone. It had to be.
And if Edie were right and the Mages didn’t stop with just taking the pendant—well, that would have to be, too.
Movement at the corner of my eye snagged my attention, and I looked toward the house, then gaped. Three figures stood on the stone porch, and behind them—behind them, the entire front entry had collapsed into stone rubble and splintered wood. Light spilling from the sitting room to the side shone across fallen beams and the debris-littered staircase, where the suits of armor stood guard no more. No wonder they’d been able to get past the wards, I thought. And now I needed to get down to business.
There are only three, my third voice whispered. You are stronger.
I ignored it.
“Mages!” I called, keeping one eye on the mountain in front of me. “Call off your dog so we can talk.”
The mountain snarled, its hot breath rushing over me in a feculent gust that smelled like rotted meat and death. I gagged and held my hand over my nose. One of the figures on the porch barked an order, and the mountain shambled two steps away. The stench of its breath remained.
One of the figures stepped away from the others. A man. The same one, I thought, who had stood at the end of Gilbert’s driveway and stared across the street at my house. He limped as he walked, his feet squelching in the wet grass, and swayed a little when he stopped again after a few steps. Brief satisfaction flared in me. Good. I wasn’t the only one.
“Crone,” he said. “You know why we’re here. Give me the pendant, and the boy lives. Call on your powers again, and he dies.”
Call on my powers? I held back a snort. If he only knew. Oh, I had power, all right, and plenty of it. I’d proven it each time I managed to connect to one of the elements, tonight included, and I was sure it was more than enough to stand up to three Mages. But it was also enough to lay waste to the people I was trying to save, and to wreak who knew what other havoc if it got away from me. Which, given my track record, wasn’t just possible, but probable.
No. I could not, would not take the risk.
“You’ll get no fight from me,” I said. “But the boy and the others leave first.” If I were about to die, I needed to know it was for a purpose.
“Lady Claire, no!” Keven growled. The mountain rumbled back at her.
I ignored her as I had the voice, even as disquiet churned in my core.
“Purpose.” Edie didn’t hold back her own snort. “Death has no purpose here, Claire, and you know it.”
I shushed her impatiently. How many voices did a woman have to ignore, anyway?
“Do we have a deal?” I asked, slipping the pendant from my neck and holding it out at arm’s length in my charred fingers. The Mage turned his back on me and faced the others for a whispered consultation I couldn’t hear. He turned back again.
“We have your word?” he asked.
“If you want it,” I agreed. Was a Crone’s word binding somehow? Not that I planned on going back on it, because I truly believed this was best. Safest. “Then yes, you have my word that I won’t—”
“Too many fucks, Claire Emerson,” Edie grated. “That’s always been your problem. Too many goddamn fucks.”
Her last word hadn’t even faded when a brilliant light flared from the direction of the scraggly little group that was my family, aimed directly at the mountain, which threw up its arms with a snarl of surprise and pain. In the brief afterglow, I saw Keven launch herself at the creature, and at the same time, a four-legged shadow slipped around the corner of the house and attacked the Mages still on the porch. Chaos ensued.
It took me a split-second to realize that without Keven, my family was no longer protected. Another second to realize that yes, it was, as Kate Abraham’s fingers danced in the air and a sparse few glowy bits of light—wards, like the fireflies Lucan had said they resembled—rose from the remains of the forest floor and gathered to form a netted dome over Paul, Natalie, and Braden.
Then Kate was at my side, grabbing the pendant from my still outstretched hand and dropping the chain over my head. “Keven and I will handle whatever that thing is,” she shouted. “You need to take out the Mages.”
I opened my mouth to object, to tell her I couldn’t, but she placed a hand against my back and shoved me toward the nearest Mage, then raced to join Keven, who had lost her element of surprise and had been thrown to the ground. The mountain roared. Braden screamed. I wavered, helpless.
“Don’t just stand there!” the Mage shrieked at the creature towering over Keven. “Finish it!” Not waiting to see if his order would be followed, he ran toward me and grabbed for the pendant. The fingers of both his hands closed over it, and his face turned triumphant. Gloating. He pulled. And pulled. And pulled again. Gloating turned to fury, and he pulled harder.
I seesawed back and forth under his attack, my head flopping. The chain bit into the back of my neck but refused to give way.
“Wait,” I cried, but my voice was lost in another scream, this one of agony—and from Lucan. My heart staggered to a halt, then thudded back to life. Lucan. Bound to me as my protector, fighting once again for me, this time alongside Keven and a woman who was essentially a stranger—all sworn to serve me as Crone while I—what? Chose saving my own family over the fate of the world? Played it safe? Took no risks...again?
“Too many fucks for too many years, Claire,” Edie’s voice echoed in my head, this time from that fateful night of my birthday party. “It’s time to divest yourself of them.”
Had she been right? Was she right now?
The ground rose up to grab my feet.
Panic rose in my belly.
Too much! my Claire-voice warned. You can’t control it. It’s too big—too dangerous!
A tree root snaked up from the earth between me and the Mage. It encircled the Mage’s wrists, tightening until he cried out and released his hold on the pendant. Then it withdrew into the wet ground, pulling him with it. Down, down...
His hands disappeared into the soil, and horror snaked through me. “Stop,” I begged the root. “Please stop.”
But it didn’t, and the Mage’s arms sank beneath the surface. He struggled now, wildly, panic flaring in his eyes as he looked up at me. He opened his mouth, but soil filled it before he could scream, and still the tree root pulled. Belatedly, I jolted into action, dropping to my knees to scrabble at the mud around his sinking body, but to no avail.
Desperately, I looked around for help. My gaze fell on Lucan, half man and half wolf, down on all fours before the remaining Mages. They stood over him, grim-faced and exultant, bombarding him with bolt after bolt of blue fire mixed with orange and purple, each one manifesting in an outstretched palm. Each making Lucan’s body convulse. Making him writhe. Wringing a mangled half-howl from his throat.
And there, to the left, the mountain of a monster, raining blow upon blow on the motionless lump of granite that had been my gargoyle.
With Kate crumpled in the grass beside them.
And the light-net of wards coming apart under a shade’s attack. The creature shrieked as the booted feet of the mage I’d tried to save disappeared beneath the earth with a wet, sucking sound. Nothing but the mud beneath my nails remained to mark his passing.
No help was coming. Not for me, and not for my family or friends. We were alone. I was alone.
I pushed upright. Stumbled. Caught my balance. I looked from one unfolding scenario to another, despair clawing at the edges of my psyche. I clenched my fists, and pain from my charred fingers ricocheted up my arm. Fuck, I thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn’t just stand here, but what could I do? I had never felt so helpless.
Divest yourself, Edie whispered.
Prickles slid across my neck and down my shoulders.
You can’t, my Claire-voice whispered.
Heat pooled in my chest.
You’ll lose control, the voice warned.
The earth thrummed against the soles of my feet.
It will be too much! my Claire-voice shouted.
She was right. I knew she was right. Already, I felt my edges unraveling, and the build-up of something inside that terrified me. But it also exhilarated me. Spread through my veins like a liquid promise. Dared me to unleash it.
“Divest,” Edie whispered.
Beneath the wards, Braden wailed again. The something inside me snapped, and the last of my restraint vanished.
“Fuck!” I roared, and then I let go.
I chose fire because I wanted the Mages to feel the same pain they inflicted on my protector—the same agony that I heard in his voice, first in his wolf’s screams, and now a man’s grunts as he absorbed the punishment inflicted upon him. It rose in me, hot and white before it even left my body. I knew because I could see it in my mind’s eye.
I watched it gather at my core and travel down my arm. Felt it sear my palm and my already burnt fingers. Absorbed its heat, held it, and then released it. The seething white ball flew straight and true, smashing into the Mages standing over Lucan before they ever saw it coming. Before it fully disconnected from me. Through it, I felt their shock, their sudden flare of fear—and then, as their eyes exploded with the fire devouring them alive, their all-consuming agony.
It was more than I’d intended it to be. More than I was prepared for. It felled me to my knees again as their mindless cries washed over me. But it didn’t last long, extinguishing along with their life sparks in the breath of an instant. There...
And then gone.
With their demise, the shade gave up its attack on the wards protecting my family and flapped away, out over the forest that was no more. The monster’s battering of Keven slowed and then ceased, and it looked around in dull puzzlement. Its gaze met mine and it stared at me. I climbed to my feet and stood swaying and exhausted and empty, trying to brace for a final attack and wondering how I would summon any more magick—any more anything.
But the mountain looked down at its victim and then tilted its head back and howled. A single, unbearably mournful cry that wrapped around my soul and made my throat go tight.
Pain, I thought in dull surprise. It’s in pain.
Then it rose to its feet, trudged to the corner of the lawn near the former woods, and disappeared into two lines of bright green light that flared, briefly intersected, and evaporated again.
I stared at the destruction I’d wrought.
From beneath the wards, my son’s voice called hoarsely, “Mom? For God’s sake, Mom, what the hell just happened?”
I had killed.
Not once, not twice, but three times.
I gripped the edges of the blanket Lucan had placed around my shoulders and stared past my protector’s shoulder into the blaze he stoked in the sitting room fireplace. Blue and yellow-red flames danced and swirled and crackled, shooting up into the chimney, but they held no heat.
At least, none that reached me.
Everything I had feared about magick had been true. I hadn’t been able to control it. Hadn’t been able to close the door on it once I had allowed it to open.
I had killed.
Lucan straightened and turned toward me. The dancing light at his back threw his face into shadow, but I could still feel his eyes on me. Feel the worry behind them.
“Another blanket, milady?” he asked.
I shook my head. Then, for lack of a better topic and because I couldn’t bear my own thoughts anymore, I said, “That—thing. That was what took Braden from his house?”
“The goliath? Yes.”
“The—” I blinked. This might be a better distraction than I’d hoped for. It certainly beat counting the drips of water falling from the entry roof onto a ruined suit of armor. “As in David and Goliath?”
“Not Goliath the myth. Goliath the creature. An unfortunate merging of Merlin and Morgana’s magick. Not quite wolf, not quite gargoyle. And damned near impervious to both me and Keven put together. If you hadn’t—”
I flinched. “Don’t,” I said, my voice husky. “Just—please don’t.”
Lucan fell silent. My thoughts crowded back. I returned to staring into the flames.
The sound of rock sliding against rock heralded Keven’s limping approach. She came into the sitting room slowly, carefully, dragging one leg behind her through the devastation I’d wrought in the front entry, a cloth slung over her shoulder. In the hand that had three claws because of another time I hadn’t been able to control my magick, she carried a bowl. In the other, newly cracked across the wrist, a mug. A large chunk was missing from one cheek, giving her face a lopsided, misshapen appearance. Her expression held the same worry as Lucan’s.
She set bowl and mug on the low table before me and, in silence, lifted my charred hand and arm from beneath the blanket. One at a time, she lifted strips of bandage from the bowl and wrapped them, dripping with pale green goop, around my blackened arm and hand.
Mergan, who had followed her into the room and jumped up onto the sofa beside me, rumbled approval as he watched the proceedings. Lucan moved to lean against the still shuttered and barred window. At least that part of the house’s facade was still standing.
I cleared my throat. “How are they?”
Outside, Paul had torn Braden from my arms when I had gone to them, hurling accusation after bitter accusation at me, screaming about how I had almost killed them all, and snarling that he never wanted me near them again. Any of them. Especially Braden.
