The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (2 page)

Up his body they went, and he could feel them, somehow, swimming through his blood, up his legs, through his stomach, into his heart, where they were pumped back out in a rush of blood.

When the first worm reached his brain, Garrett knew the blackness of death.

Steuben watched everyone fleeing the barn; he didn’t know what was happening. He raced back in with his master’s axe, ready to stand by his side while he ended Margie’s life, even if all of those cowards had fled. But what he saw when he stepped into the room was something he wasn’t prepared to handle.

Garrett lay on the cow, his clothes soaked with blood and pungent milk. At first he didn’t think there was anything wrong. Garrett had been attached to the cow since Ruby had died last year. It
had
been her favorite cow. Most likely Garrett was just overcome with emotion, knowing what he had to do, knowing that he had to kill the cow.

But then he saw more blood, thick like syrup and so red it was almost black, ooze out from under his master’s body, mingling with the milk, turning it pink save for the curdles, which looked now like white stones in a sea of blood.

“Garrett?” Steuben said, stepping forward hesitantly.

Garrett rose up and turned toward Steuben. He took one labored step toward his farm manager and reached for him. Steuben held up the axe, handing it to his master, not seeing the emptiness on Garrett’s face, or the blood gushing out of his mouth as the master of the plantation gnawed on something.

“I know this is hard for you,” Steuben told him, his eyes locked on the dead gaze of Margie. “I’ll stay here with you while you do it.”

But firm hands on his shoulders made Steuben look up. By the time he realized that something else had come over his master, it was too late to run. Maggots and white worms writhed in Garrett’s mouth, burrowing into the lump of flesh therein.

Steuben opened his mouth to scream, but Garrett buried his stinking maw in Steuben’s neck before he could make so much as a sound.

Steuben fell, and Garrett tumbled along with him, never breaking his mouth from Steuben’s neck. As the light slipped from Steuben’s eyes, worms slid out of Garrett’s chomping mouth and into the open wound.

Hours later the dark-skinned Steuben and the gray-bearded Garrett shambled out of the barn. In their wake, trailing corded lengths of intestine after her, slumped Margie. They made their way north-east, into the mountains.

Inside their brains the worms were fast at work, taking over their hosts with the need to find the Neferis.

Angelica watched as Shelara’s blue skin bloomed with a green iridescence. She thought the blush came and went as the dark elf’s mood dictated, but she wasn’t sure if that was true or not. If Angelica’s skin blushed in time with her emotions, she imagined she would be mostly green, and very little blue.

She was a strange blend of emotions right then, all of which added up to nausea. The trip ahead of them was the last leg of their journey. Angelica felt it with a certainty in her bones. At the end of this road, they would find their sister, Amber. So why was she nervous?

Her eyes followed the path to the west, through the snow-laden Barrier Mountains, which Annbell told them was the quickest route for them to take. At the end of that path was the darkness Azra had spoken about to the Realm Guardians.

And they all knew who that darkness was. If they’d been smart, they would have read the foretelling of the nymphs back so long ago, when they thought it was a simple seek-and-find.

Arael lives.

That’s what the dead nymphs had been trying to tell the group.

The Beast
, Angelica thought. She shivered, her blood running cold. She checked the lapis shin-buto on her back, to make sure she could draw the sword quickly if needed. They were still gathered with the group, saying their farewells, so attack was unlikely, but it was always good to be prepared.

In the plains down below, the frement war machines were heading out in a clatter of mechanics and hissing of steam. What was left of the darkwood dryads followed them. Angelica looked to her side, at the gun she had been gifted by the cat people from the Realm of Shadow known as the frement. She had used a crossbow before, and wondered if it was the same. Caldamron told them he would teach them all how to use the weapon, but that they were best for long-range fighting since they had to be loaded after each firing.

Grace walked up to her, breaking her train of thought. Without saying a word, Angelica bent and hugged the old lady to herself. Silent tears streaked down her face. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt it would be the last time she hugged Grace. It was a sense of knowing, like Angelica got in her visions.

I can’t bear to lose her too
, Angelica thought, pulling the crone tighter.

“Easy now, you’ll break me,” Grace whispered into her ear. Her frail shoulders bounced with a chuckle.

“Be careful,” Angelica said, reluctantly releasing her old tutor. She dashed her tears away. Grace cupped Angelica’s face in her waxy, wrinkled hands.

“We face fallen angels, Angelica, we must all be careful. This isn’t a walk in the park, but I’ll do what I can to return safely to you.” Grace smiled at Angelica, and her watery blue eyes looked up to her. “Now, you guys remember?” Grace stepped back and addressed Angelica and her group. “When you’re done, return to the keep. We will meet here once more, and celebrate our victory.”

Grace sounded so sure of herself that it was hard not to believe they would be victorious.

They all nodded.

Angelica looked around at all of the people she’d come to know as friends. Devenstar stepped away from Cianna. His eyes were red, but he wasn’t crying. Clara, just freshly wakened from her elemental trials, stood beside Pi, holding her tight, biting her lip and refusing to look at Angelica’s group.

Angelica had to look away; she couldn’t face all of these people she might never see again. She’d rather remember them as happy, as they were when they defeated the legion of chaos dwarves, not as they were now, mournful at another parting. Possibly the last, for some of them.

“Now, if we’re going to do this, it has to be now,” Sara said, stepping up beside Grace, barely leaning on her cane any longer. Angelica wasn’t sure if the dark-haired Realm Guardian was using wyrd on her withered muscles, or if she’d already healed. “Be safe, and Goddess speed.”

Angelica nodded and fell into step behind Jovian as her group separated from those who were staying behind. Ahead, Joya and Cianna were chatting amongst themselves, but Angelica couldn’t hear what they were saying. Not that she wanted to, not with the emotions running through her body.

Shelara had her thin blade in hand, scanning the road ahead and to either side of their path, which had been cleared recently for their departure. Once they were high enough in the mountains, Sara told them they would find routes kept open by the giants.

Jovian and Maeven walked hand in hand in front of her, and behind her Caldamron brought up the rear, his gun held loosely at his side. While she still could, Angelica looked behind her just in time to see Grace vanish from sight around a corner, and down the path to the keep. From there, her group had their own mission: to travel to the Ivory City and help Aladestra with the recent attacks.

As Grace passed out of sight, Angelica felt the last true connection she had to her old life vanish with her. Now it was just them. They were adults, and they had to make their own decisions. There wasn’t anyone there to guide them, no one helping them or even giving vague instructions. This was up to them. In this Grace knew as much as they did. Their old teacher could no more help them defeat Arael than she could breathe water.

It was a loneliness Angelica hadn’t thought she could feel. With her family completely destroyed, save the brother and the sister she traveled with now, and the mother that resided in her body, no one was left.

Angelica sighed and turned back to the path.

An hour later, swathed in their warm clothes and their wyrded cloaks, the group found the first of the trails kept open by giants. They stopped and rested, looking out to the south. The sun bathed the plains below them in a river of honey, shining majestically off the snow-covered reaches of the Realm of Earth.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Caldamron asked.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Angelica said, brushing her blonde hair behind her ear.

“I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of wonders in your travels,” the cat-man said, passing a canteen of water to Angelica. She took a swig, swished it around in her dry mouth, and then swallowed several more mouthfuls.

“But never anything as natural as this. The wonders I’ve seen were man-made. This was Goddess-made.” Angelica looked up at the black furred cat-man.

Caldamron laughed, a deep rumbling bass, and nodded his head in understanding.

“I never thought I would see the sun at all, let alone this glory,” he told her. “Look, if you peer hard enough, you can almost see the dark border of my homeland.”

Angelica tried to see the border of the Shadow Realm, the land her sister Joya now ruled, but she couldn’t make it out. His eyesight had to be better than hers. Or maybe he was just hoping he could see his home, something that was familiar in this unfamiliar land. Angelica nodded anyway, as if she could see it as well.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“I miss my work, the machines, and my family. The constant darkness? No.”

Little more was said before they headed out. Angelica knew all about missing family, but at least the frement had a home to go back to, a job, activities as they had always been. This was just a vacation from his life.

But that’s not right,
Angelica thought. She knew she was wrong. This wasn’t just about her family any longer. The attacks of the fallen angels proved that. This was a struggle for all the realms. If they failed, how long would it be before Shelara and Caldamron didn’t have a home to go back to?

Angelica could almost imagine the darkness of Chaos sweeping over the lands, decimating whatever lay in its path to domination.

Late in the evening, as Maeven was scouting ahead for a place to camp for the night, a howling could be heard off in the distance.

Cianna held her hand up to Joya, hushing the younger woman, and turned her head to listen.

“What is it?” Angelica asked, coming to a stop behind her cousin.

“I don’t know,” she said, a frown knitting her dark brows. “It sounds like a wolf, but not living.”

“An undead wolf?” Angelica asked. The thought struck her almost as comical, until she realized such a thing might be possible. It was a sobering thought.

“A ghost, maybe,” Cianna said. Several minutes passed, but the howl didn’t come again.

That night they camped to the side of the road, huddled around a camp fire, their wyrded bedrolls warm enough to keep the cold of the night from harming them. Angelica didn’t pay any attention to the chatting that took place, and instead stared off into the distance, her eyes trying to find the darkness of the Shadow Realm that Caldamron claimed to have seen. She couldn’t see any sign of it, either because it was already growing dark, or because it wasn’t there to see.

There was a stiff wind that night, but their camp sat in such a way that a cliff face was to their back, and the squall didn’t touch them. When they woke early in the morning, it was to find themselves covered in an inch of snow and reluctant to get out of their beds.