Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death Read online

  Her typical rant made no sense as usual, and her summation of my current events just made my mind reel and my body ache all the more.

  “Maebe. What the hell are you babbling about?” I spat. If it was a recap she wanted to give, she needed to find another audience.

  “Oh, very well,” she sighed with disgust, waving her hand in the air as though to brush away my impertinence. Her impatience with me was obvious, and it was clear she was annoyed that she couldn’t bait me into what had become our normal banter, as she growled and snorted at me before continuing. “Into you great secrets now hide. The Way has been chosen and all must abide.”

  A groan of exasperation escaped my pursed lips before I could think better of it and hold it in. I hunkered down in my blanket, leaned my head against the window of the Jeep and swore to myself that the hag was sent from beyond specifically to drive me insane with her jaunty rhymes and lyrical tirades. Didn’t she see that I was wounded? That I was weary as death and just plain not up for this shit?

  “Darkness and Death call out in the night. Steal they the Light when sleeping dogs lie.” Her rant continued, and I closed my eyes. “The sins of the Chosen—forgiven they must. Life unto Death—the Light you must trust.”

  Immediately her words began to race around in my head—a wicked tune for the wayward. “What the hell does that mean, Maebe?” I asked, turning in my seat, unable to get the ditty out of my mind, each word chasing the other like a death knell. I would say I was shocked to see her evaporate before my eyes like an ethereal mist, but after everything I had just survived, even this didn’t surprise me. Besides, it wasn’t the first time she’d done it to me—pop in with a load of crap for me to figure out, then immediately bug out on me.

  “I really hate it when you do that,” I groaned to the empty seat she’d been occupying.

  “The sins of the Chosen—forgiven they must. Life unto Death—the Light you must trust.” Her whispered words echoed once more through the Jeep like an aftershock, ripples of power rolling up my flesh.

  “Yet another mysterious message I’m to figure out on the fly. Thanks, Maebe,” I told the empty seat, sarcasm dripping like a festering wound. “Like I really needed anything else added to my overflowing plate.”

  Continued silence was the only response.

  I really needed to find another line of work. Funny thing was, I just didn’t see myself answering phones at Stock-Tip-R-Us. Maybe I could apply for a job at Creeley’s Crematorium, whose creepy motto just happened to be, “You Weep, We’ll Sweep—Your Loved One in a Lovingly Crafted Urn.” Yeah, that was so happening in my immediate future.

  The remainder of the drive passed in silence, both Gimlit and Jet leaving me to my own morbid thoughts. Probably wasn’t a very good idea. Bits and pieces of the previous night’s events—our foray into the Land of Light, my glorious homecoming—slashing through my mind like a bad ripper movie.

  The images of my mother wrenching out her ghastly pink hair, screaming in agony as our Queen siphoned the Light from her body. It almost made me want to retch. Almost.

  Then, of course, there was the Queen’s own power-ripe body glowing like a supernova, floating like an orb of sunlight while she purposely slammed me around the Throne Room, pummeling me with as much power as she could summon. Jeez, how could I forget that? Not to mention the dark light of demented glee burning in her eyes like a twisted, festering disease filling her up, one dark beam at a time. Stupid, crazy Pixie bitch! It’s always so nice to go home. Not.

  Unfortunately, if I closed my eyes I could still feel the pulse of that power churning in my belly, the ebb and flow of power spiking through my limbs like burning points of light, each one scalding my flesh. I could smell the rich scent of green fields and lush flora of fauna; feel the warm burning, golden glow of life and Light heating me from the inside out. The liquid heat filled me up as though I was a barren, empty cup.

  It was the warmth of a summer glen in full bloom multiplied a thousand times trying to rip its way out of my veins. Trying to burst my paltry half-breed heart and spill out of my flesh in a blazing haze of summer vacation overload. My breath hitched with the searing pain of it, and the slam of my head bouncing off the car window brought my eyes wide open in a jarring flash.

  “Mistress,” Gimlit stated sternly. “I would kindly suggest that you do not tap into these newfound sources of power until we reach our destination and are safe from other moving obstacles.”

  “Sorry, Gim,” I sheepishly replied, blinking rapidly against the vibrant glow within the Jeep. I took several slow, even breaths, praying that the Prophets would protect us and cautiously waited for my eyes to adjust while my light slowly reduced itself from ultra-neon blaze to something you might actually not be afraid to touch.

  Whatever had happened to me must have been some serious Fey mojo. If I thought my previous glowing was something to be proud of it seemed I’d now become the ultra freaking-beacon of shit that shines at will. What the bloody hell!

  “It is truly quite all right,” Gimlit was saying, seeming to take it all in stride now that he’d gotten my attention. “However, if you would be kind enough not to think about anything warm, fuzzy and sunny until we make it home, I am quite certain we will all arrive there safely.”

  Says you! I thought sardonically.

  Whatever had happened to me with my Queen must have been some serious Pixie hou-ha. Especially if just thinking about it made me glow like a supernova. One thing was for certain, I needed to get a grip on it and fast if I had any hope of saving Kieran and the rest of my…family?

  The word lingered in my mind. A stab of worry and regret filling me as bits and pieces of memory danced through my soul like a waltzing, rotted corps.

  Stunned and afraid, I sat there in the lull of the Jeep while the mist of morning light, death and tragedy filled me like so much grave dust. Then, hesitantly I tried to call out to Kieran with my mind. But there was nothing. Dead air. No response whatsoever. Nothing but a dark black haze, like snow on a T.V. at four am.

  Why couldn’t I feel him? Who was keeping him from me and what the hell had happened to him that he would call to me in the midst of a battle; fear and need filling his voice and me, unable to properly respond? Unable to save him?

  What had Jirvel done to him and the others to keep them from escaping? To keep them from responding to me now? And why had that bitch on wheels let Jet go? What sort of message was Jet, even now, chomping at the bit to share with me?

  Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be really, really bad. Horrifically bad. And, I’m quite sure it would piss me off beyond measure. One thing was for certain; whatever had happened, or was about to happen, I was definitely going to make sure that the pasty white bitch paid for it in spades. This time, the stakes were going to be double-pointed and filled with Light. Ol’ girl was going to see what it meant to dance with the Fey in the Darkness.

  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Pixie, when Darkness crosses over into the Light.

  Chapter Two

  What’s madness but nobility of soul

  At odds with circumstance? The day’s on Fire!

  I know the purity of pure despair,

  My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

  From In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

  Another death, another cleansing to wash away the stench of rot. Wait, scratch that. No one had died—yet. Still, the ugly thoughts remained. Dark, vile, and loathsome thoughts. Each one morbidly disgusting. One chasing the other around and around in my head like poltergeists bent on my destruction. I couldn’t seem to shake them. It was as though I were overloading on Darkness. A port-wine stain of wretchedness spreading steadily across my flesh, seeping from the inside out, each one marring another piece of what was left of my soul despite the amount of Light I had just sucked out of my great Pixie Queen. My insides still quaked with the afterthoughts.

  We’d managed to make it home, but the house was empty. Deathly quiet and eerily still. In the
morning shafts of sun that seemed to sneak in at odd angles from the blinds you caught glimpses of dust motes winging heavily in the air. Wisps of dust and magic. It was all very profound, like the unspoken words of worry. Worry that tiptoed around the husks of those who wandered here while they all tiptoed around me. Each one waiting for me to speak the words of comfort we all seemed to need to hear.

  Sadly, I had no words of comfort to offer. All of those I’d come to care about were missing. Their loss was telling in this empty space we’d come to know as home.

  The furniture missing Ien’s repose, the backroom the pirate’s laugh of my swashbuckling Markus. Noises I hadn’t even known I’d grown accustomed to until the emptiness reverberated off the stabbing pain in my heart. Numbly I looked around the shell of my living room. Lost.

  Jade met me at the door, arms open; a comforting warmth to return to. But even his heart was laden with sadness. I could see aloneness; a deep-seated fear forming a shape like a dark patch of smog in his luminescent eyes.

  “I can’t feel them,” he whispered, clinging to me from the entryway of the front door. Them...his brothers, Garric and Ien. Our wolves. Our pack.

  “I know,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry, Jade.” The knot in my throat cut off my air. My body began to tremble. Spasms, sudden and uncontrollable ricocheted up my spine. Bright lights in an array of sparkling colors burst before my eyes.

  I vaguely remember hearing my name called, the sound muffled and far away. My vision swam and my world enfolded upon itself. My head suddenly felt like someone had stuck a hot poker inside it and dropped it in a vat of boiling oil. The pain made my brain feel oddly fluid and filled with fire. Heat spread down my neck, each ear humming before ringing erupted inside my head. Then, the fire quickly shot down my shoulders and back. When it reached my chest I think I screamed, my heart feeling like it was shriveling from the flames. Still it consumed me, the fire raging onward, reaching my belly, my hips. When it reached my knees they buckled, collapsing beneath me, and I vaguely recall thinking that the floor wasn’t far beyond. Everything else was just color melting into color. All the pretty, pretty colors—melting.

  I have no recollection of how long I was out for, but when I opened my eyes, I was neck deep in a warm pool of scented water, the high-gloss shine of burning candles illuminating my world. The diffused light hurt my eyes and I had to blink several times, forcing them to stay open. My hunter green bathroom glowed like a Fey ring at festival. In the middle of it Prism sat quietly on the floor, her legs folded before her. Softly she hummed some ancient sort of hymn in a language I’d never heard.

  I was definitely glad to be in my own home, resting comfortably in my own bathtub. Gimlit must have lugged it in from the storage shed out back. Lately, with the way my seasons had been going, it seemed the tub was in the house more often than not. And I seemed to be spending an awful lot of time in its healing waters.

  Funny, I used to not want it near me at all. However, at the moment, I was very happy to be able to be breathing and sitting upright in the damn thing. The Gift of Tides had been one of my first Tells of Power. When I first received this Tell, I managed to flood all twelve floors of my previous apartment building.

  Don’t laugh. It’s not every day that a mere half-breed gets a gift from the Prophets. However, the super of my building got so pissed that I’d trashed all of the carpet in his building that he booted me out. It was after I was forced to move that I booted out the tub. No point in a repeat. But since then, I’ve learned that I can now call on more than just mere water. With time and practice, I learned that any fluid will work, including blood.

  This comes in pretty handy for a good ol’ slash and burn kind of brawl. And when I get my hands on that pasty white Death Stalker, Jirvel, I’m going to see just how much of hers I can watch flow down her pathetic flesh.

  But I digress. Right now, I was definitely very thankful for the warmth of the tub and whatever was in it that was making me feel better.

  “’Tis not the water so much as the changing,” Prism whispered, looking up at me with her large doe eyes from beyond the strands of her multi-colored hair. She was such a frail, ethereal thing, it made me wonder how she had survived so long in the Goblin Kings’ clutches.

  “And how did you survive, Rihker of the Forest? Care of the Goblin King is not so easy a feat to sustain for a Halfling with no powers.”

  I couldn’t help but smile half-heartedly at her. Although, I really do hate it when they do that—read my thoughts without my permission. Her questions however, marked a point. How had I survived for that month at the mercy of Modgav when I was just a mere half-breed without any powers? I was just a child still, really—no more than seventeen.

  It had been so long since I’d thought about that time. The memories lived like a demon in a black cage, locked away in my mind. One I only fed when the anger was great, the hatred strong and my need of its fury a requirement for survival. But the how of it still evaded me.

  “Much feeds the Darkness?” she stated, rising from the floor and retrieving a small vial off the edge of the sink. “There is great suffering in the dark void of tragedy. It is what we use to build our defenses.” She poured the rich green substance that smelled like moss and oleander into the water before she continued. “Careful construction we use to maintain the strength of our walls. But if you seal them off and never truly understand what is behind them, it is the Darkness itself that will use your own pain against you.”

  “So, what?” I questioned with a sigh, somehow knowing without asking where this conversation would be taking us. “You’re saying I need to remember how I survived in Modgav’s clutches?” Why do we have to go there? I really, truly don’t want to go there.

  “If you wish to fight and beat the Goblins, you must first know your own weaknesses. And in turn, realize your strengths.”

  Warm steam began to rise from the still waters of the bath, an odd scent filling the air around me. Prism was close to the edge of the tub, her multi-colored hair soft and sparkling in the strange light that filled room. I began to feel an odd, blurry, tingly sort of sensation fill my senses.

  “What was in the vial?” I asked, my voice sounding thick to my own ears. My body began to feel weightless. I was floating like a drop of dew in, then above, the warm water.

  Her fingers reached for my face, gently brushing along my jaw. “Something to help you remember,” she whispered. She was leaning closer now, her large multi-colored eyes so close I could see beyond my reflection into and beyond their swirling depths.

  When I blinked away the misty haze, it was Kieran’s face I saw staring back at me. The velvet hue of his rich amethyst eyes locked with mine, and my stomach clenched with uncertainty. The length of his lush dark hair curled in the steam, and my breath caught.

  “How?” I croaked, my chest growing tight with confusion. Disbelief and uncertainty filled me while the steam thickened around us. Strange scents permeated from the water, filling my mind with its mystical fog. “How?” I whispered again, his lips a breath from mine.

  “You must remember,” he told me in the rough, lilting Irish brogue I swore I’d know anywhere. It was the voice I’d grown accustomed to in the darkness, the touch, gentle and compelling. He pulled me into his embrace and with the warmth of his lips touching mine I was spellbound. Lost the instant his tongue swept into my mouth, need and yearning filling me even as memories of pain and loss, worry and fear flooded my mind. A portion of my brain told me something wasn’t quite right, my body not caring in the slightest. The need to be touched, held and comforted by him outweighed the inconsistencies.

  “Remember,” he growled, his mouth hungry at my neck, his hands skimming the edges of my body. My breasts grew heavy with need. His agile fingers cupped them, finding their tight peaks. He climbed into the water with me, his pale body glowing in the candlelight, his sex rigid with need. Hungry lips, the sharp points of canines clutching onto my breast, and I couldn’t contain my groan. Fire s
parked through my body. I rose up out of the water as the bite of sharp teeth pierced my flesh.

  “Kieran.”

  “Remember.”

  I closed my eyes against the onslaught of desire and fear. When his fingers brushed the edge of my hip, shards of need scourged through me, each digit reaching for the swollen apex of my quivering sex, and I was burning alive. When the sharp tip of claws skimmed the juncture just above my swollen nub, my eyes fluttered open, the stark rush of horror, instant and pure, roaring through me.

  Disbelief held me captive. Vehemence and forgotten memories of black rage ensnared my mind. Horror clutched its talons around my soul as my eyes beheld my worst nightmare come to life in my arms: Modgav’s wart ridden, blue-puce flesh poised above me; gangly arms wrapped around my now dread-riddled body while he clung to me, the dark gleam of victory in his prism-colored eyes. Fear, unbidden, pierced through my heart.

  “Do you remember now?” he growled.

  I did the only thing my horror-filled mind could force my rigid body to do; I gathered my rage and punched him square in the middle of his disgusting face.

  His stout body splashed back against the other end of the tub, water sloshing everywhere; candles snuffing out in the tide of my fury.

  “You bastard! You…You…bitch!” I roared, trying to scramble out of the tub. Claw-like nails raked down my thigh, pulling me back in before I could even get a leg out, my leverage pulled out from under me, my foot sliding on the porcelain bottom. I was pulled under the water’s turbulent haze.

  Large hands wrapped around my throat, the scruff of a bumpy, hairy body heavy on me, holding me under. I clung to those hands, trying unsuccessfully to pry them loose, the gleam of yellowed ink spots forming behind my eyes. The last of my air wheezed tightly from my lungs, pain and desperation riffling through me once again, desperation for that one last breath.