World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (37 page)

Ravana’s soul. The Originators did have souls after all. What had this one done to suffer such a fate?

Her eyes rolled in her head like a frightened horse. They took me in, studying me. I stayed still, overcome with horror, too shocked to speak.

How long had she been here popping out parasite babies? How long had she stayed here, in this room, unable to leave? No stimulation, no entertainment, just labor—literally—day in day out … for centuries?

Had Ravana put her here? It was something that bitch would do. Licking my dry lips, I managed to say, “I knew your Originator.” Her eyes focused on me, for a little while, at least. “I killed her. She was evil personified and I killed her. I’m sorry.”

Blink, blink. She took in a noisy lungful of air. Let it out slow. Her eyes gleamed, whether with tears or evil, I didn’t know. I didn’t think she was evil. Souls were all that was pure about us. Had Ravana ever been pure, though? Or had she been malevolent down to her marrow?

“She put me here,” the soul said, painfully slow as if she hadn’t spoken in centuries. “Ripped me from her body. Stuffed me in a vessel and put me here. I am glad she’s dead.” She raised a meaty fist and smeared her tears trying to wipe them away. “Pain. Boredom. Lonely.”

Another life ruined because of Ravana. Even beyond her grave, she was causing pain.

“Do you want me to free you?”

She stared at me as if she didn’t know what the words meant. “No,” she said after a long pause. “I’ll never be free. I am cursed.”

I was cursed too. I tugged off my glove and held up my blackened hand with its slowly dying fingertips. “I had to reach into the Witch King to get the Spider Queen’s eyeball.” I loved saying that. It was so ridiculous sounding and yet all true. “I know what it means to be cursed. Though I haven’t suffered like you have suffered.”

The door boomed. The Riders must have realized their queen was in danger. The crossbar held, but I heard the pop and crack of the wood. It wouldn’t last through a concerted assault on the door. I returned to my conversation, well aware our time was running out. “Do you happen to know where my daughter is? A Rider took her and brought her here. There’s also a man I need to find.”

“The girl and the man.” She sounded dreamy, as if she’d taken a hit of some fantastic weed. “They belong to our tribe now. I’m sorry.”

I shut my eyes. Damn it. And no Sephony to cure them.

My knees threatened to give way, but I locked them tight, unwilling to let myself be weak now. “Can you take it out of them?”

Blink. “I give birth. I create.”

Which told me nothing.

Tears were sliding down the poor soul’s cheeks. She rocked slightly, trying to comfort herself. She was too fat to do much else for herself. What had it been like to be stuck here for centuries? Who would do such a thing to someone else?

Ravana.

I’d felt guilty over taking her life. Any remaining sorrow over my actions that day vanished in the wake of this horrific abuse.

“Sad,” she said. “No love. I ask them to touch. Love. No love.”

Dear lord. Without thinking, I stepped close and wrapped my arms around her. She smelled of dust and filth. This was the scent of despair, of loneliness so profound, it seeped from her pores and ran like tears over her skin. “I’m so sorry. You deserve more than this. You deserve love. Respect.”

Somewhere, outside the door, someone screamed.

The parasites that Ravana’s soul had birthed while we talked went up like popcorn kernels in hot oil. The dead one at my feet exploded, a tiny pop of sound.

I pulled back, intent on figuring out what the hell was happening and saw that I’d forgotten to put my glove back on. I’d hugged her. I’d touched her.

Her eyes were wide, staring up at the ceiling. As I watched, her skin blackened, peeled, and sloughed off her bones, so fast.

“Oh god,” I gasped. I’d killed her and I hadn’t even meant to. Hadn’t meant to.

The curse crawled over her skin, her belly, down her swollen legs. It ate her as it went and left behind ash to sift to the floor like black snow.

She didn’t survive it. She didn’t turn into a living statue of burnt flesh. When the curse had run its course, there was nothing left of the soul but a pile of ash.

No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t a human, never had been. She was a soul inside a vessel and it’d been the vessel that burned away. Ravana’s soul lifted free from the destruction and filth on the floor all around us. It darted between Krosh and me, bouncing in what could only be described as joy. Then it shot straight for the ceiling, found a crack in the wall near the top, and vanished.

TWENTY-NINE

We opened the doors cautiously, ready to fight.

Bodies greeted us. The lines of drones had collapsed like dominoes, stretching down the street and out of sight. At the death of Ravana’s soul—or her release from the curse—all the parasites self-destructed.

I knelt by one of the drones, heart hammering in my chest. If the destruction of the parasite meant death for its host … but no. This one had a pulse, and the next and the next.

“This one is alive too. Follow your daughter’s lifeline so you can hold her in your arms.”

Dared I hope?

I opened up my Magic Eye and her line threaded into a room across the hall. We picked our way over the fallen drones and slipped inside.

Bethany sat on the ground holding her head.

“Baby?”

She looked up, her face dirty and so, so beautiful. “Mommy!”

I ran to her, falling to my knees beside her, crying. Laughing. “Is it really you?”

My lovely, serious kid said, “I think so. Do I look like me?”

I kissed her forehead, her cheek, then hugged her, then kissed her again, wanting nothing more than to hold her and never let her go. “Oh sweet girl I’ve missed you.”

We held each other, longer than she’d ever let me hold her since she turned ten. When we pulled away from each other, we both had to scrub tears from our cheeks. “Did Arsinua treat you well?”

“I already said yeah, Mom.”

I grunted. “What about when you got here? Did you have hook sickness?”

Bethany tucked her hair behind her ear. It smelled different than her usual shampoo and that lack of familiarity with what she’d been using on her hair hurt me. All that time with my daughter lost. Time we’d never get back. “Arsinua gave me some weird tasting berries. She looked really nervous when she bought them and she told me never to tell anyone I ate them.”

I narrowed my eyes. That hypocrite. Arsinua had turned up her nose when I’d told her about the domar berries and then she turned around and bought some. I was grateful my daughter hadn’t gotten sick from the transition from Earth to Midia, but still. Stupid witch. “And the Anforsa?”

Bethany shuddered. “I didn’t like her. She hit me. Then she dragged me by my arm to a closet and locked me in. I was glad when she sold me to the pirates. Mom! They live on an airship and they fly all over and it’s like a gigantic hot air balloon!”

I laughed, pushing down the bitter gall that rose in my throat from the mention of the Anforsa. The bitch had hurt my daughter, locked her in a closet, and then sold her. To pirates.

She was so dead.

“I know. We are going to have to take a voyage sometime when it’s not life or death. I came here on an airship, you know.”

“Yes! That means we get to ride back on one, right?”

“Nope. I’m going to hook you to Odd Silver. Your brother has missed you as much as I have.”

Bethany frowned. “Odd Silver?”

“Long story.” We were interrupted by Zephyrinia, who staggered in holding her head. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“What happened?” She was dazed, doing that slow blink of someone coming out of a deep sleep. “Where’s Mal?”

“I don’t know.”

Krosh went to her and took hold of her elbow so she wouldn’t fall on her face. “You sit and I will look for him.” He helped her to the floor and then left the room.

“Why aren’t you all fuzzy headed?” Zeph asked. She caught sight of my daughter and smiled. “She’s okay.”

“Yes.” My relief was evident in every letter of the word. “Krosh and I were both infected by the Rider potential a while back. I think it kept us from being infected a second time.”

“Lucky you,” she muttered. “I feel like someone took a sledge to my head.”

Ow. “Bethany, this is Zephyrinia, captain of the
Lady Free
, the airship that brought us here to find you. Captain, this is my daughter, Bethany Miller.”

“Nice to meet you, young lady. Your mother has run herself ragged trying to save you.”

Bethany reached out and squeezed my hand in thank you. “Nice to meet you too.” She paused, licking her lips. “You’re the captain?”

“Yes ma’am. Have been since my father died sixty years ago.”

Bethy’s eyes got wide. “You don’t look that old!”

I snorted, embarrassed by my daughter’s candid words. “Witches age much slower than humans, baby.”

“Oh.” By the look on her face, I knew she was chewing on something. “So, does that mean I’ll age slower too?”

I shrugged. It was Zeph who answered. “If you live here you surely will.”

“Live in Midia?” There was doubt in her voice, mixed with fear.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not something you have to deal with now.”

It took Krosh twenty minutes to track down Mal and when he returned, it was with the
sorcier sexe
draped over his shoulders, the man’s body limp.

Zeph made a noise, not quite a cry, and cradled Mal’s head as Krosh lowered him to the ground. “What’s wrong with him? Do you think he’s dead?”

Krosh pressed his fingers at the base of Mal’s neck. “He has a pulse. He’s warm.”

He’d also had the parasite inside him for countless years. Its sudden destruction would have done some damage, I’d imagine. How much, I couldn’t say.

Zeph held him and crooned, her hand flattened on his cheek. I turned away, not wanting to intrude on the moment, intimate as it was.

Krosh squatted down beside me, elbows resting on his knees, his hands hanging between them. He smiled at Bethy and she gave him a shy grin in return. “I’m Kroshtuka.”

“Bethany.”

They shook hands, my two special people. He said, “I had planned to meet you the night you disappeared. Perhaps you smelled me coming and ran away.”

She giggled. “You don’t smell too bad,” she said. She glanced at me, questioning.

Did I say, ‘Hey, he’s my boyfriend,’? That sounded juvenile. “He’s a very good friend. And he’s worked as hard to find you as I have.” And I love him, but I left that out for now. “It’s his town we’re going to next, where Liam is waiting. Well, next after we get Zeph and Mal back to the ship.”

“We’ll have to make a litter for him,” the sky captain said, her strong voice steady, not a hint of stress in it.

“I can hook you back. As soon as your men get here.”

She nodded, her shoulders dropping in relief. “Thank you.”

***

Her men arrived shortly after, stepping carefully over the bodies as they came. Some of the drones were waking up; some still slept. I hated leaving them there, vulnerable and exposed, but I didn’t know what else to do. Perhaps the waking ones would care for the others. I had no idea, and there were other things on my plate.

I gathered everyone into a tight circle, Zeph and Mal still on the floor at my feet in the middle. I made a big hook that encompassed us all and dropped us onto the deck of the airship. I hadn’t been sure until my feet touched wood that the wild magic would let me be so direct. Perhaps it wasn’t as tricksy on Ketwer Island as it was in the Wilds.

Zeph’s men helped carry Mal to their quarters and laid him on the bed. Petra came in soon after with a leather satchel filled with her medicines. She sat on the edge of the bed and opened up the battered case, then looked expectantly at Zeph.

The captain swallowed, her skin tinged with green. I caught her before her knees gave out and eased her into a chair. I said to Petra, “He’s had a parasite removed from his brain. I don’t know if he’ll wake again.”

Petra pressed her lips thin. “He will if he knows what’s good for him.”

As she set to work, I fetched water for Zephyrinia, pressing the glass into her hands. “Drink,” I ordered and watched until she took a sip. Then I went to the bed and sat at Mal’s feet. I tugged up his pants’ leg and pressed my hand against his flesh, then dropped down into my control room. I didn’t want to think the parasite’s death had scrambled his brain. I didn’t want that on my conscious too, nor did I want Zephyrinia’s reward for helping me find Bethany be losing her lover. ‘Mal?’ I asked, hoping my imagination would give me the answer like it had before, usually in the guise of a lever to pull or switch to throw.

There was a speaker system I’d used before to establish a mind-link to Krosh. I went over and thumbed the button on the mic. ‘Mal?’