Dark One: One for Sorrow... (The Khiara Banning Series Book 1) (35 page)

I find that I’m not really shivering like I was in the car. I can hardly feel the cold, though I acknowledge its existence with every visible puff of my breaths and Cael’s, as he tromps through the snow beside me.

We don’t talk. He must sense my urgency.

And so we walk, following the crow into the forest eventually, and away from the road. Onward we walk as it begins to snow lightly. We keep walking even when Cael’s phone dies, leaving us with only the light of the moon. My gait becomes a sort of strange march, eventually, and the uniformity of my steps becomes almost comforting in this dark winter wonderland. Eventually Cael falls behind me just a bit, watching my back.

Finally we reach a large clearing in the forest and I think my journey is done, but my last step falters, making me fall to my knees.

“Khiara!” Cael exclaims, rushing to catch me just a second too late, as i hit the cold ground.

Instantly I feel the tell-tale drip from my nose as if it were a faucet that’d just been turned on after years of being shut off, one drop, and suddenly a warm gush the ground in front of me has turned red. I move to use the sweater to staunch the bleeding, but find that I have no control over my arms.

“Help,” I whisper to Cael as he takes my arm, but he is helpless as I begin to seize uncontrollably.

~*~

Khiara is in full on seizure mode, and all I can do is hold her body down and hope to God that she doesn’t choke as she thrashes around, mumbling incoherently. I don’t know why I even drove the
damned
car to this
damned
forest – it was like something came over me and I just couldn’t get past it. I could have sworn I had my own wits about me, though.

I think.

Khiara practically screams at whatever is going on behind her rapidly moving eyelids, and I’m forced to admit to myself that I clearly
didn’t
have my wits about me, or else I’d have pulled her into the car the minute she stepped out of it, and brought her home. I wouldn’t have even let her walk out of the apartment. 

“Morrigan,” I whisper, “what are you doing?”

The crow caws in the distance, as if answering me, but my eyes can’t focus on where the sound came from.

And then it hits me. The crow.

“Show yourself!” I shout angrily, and before my eyes, a woman begins to materialize.

Her black hair is pulled back by a leather chord, and she wears a loose grey toga-style dress.

“Hello Camael,” she purrs, as she crouches before us, placing a hand on Khiara’s chest and stopping the seizure in its tracks, leaving her to look as if she were sleeping.

My heart fissures at the sight, but she is very much alive, though drained. I have to remember that.

“Hello,” I echo silently. I wanted to yell at her, to scream at her, but all of the words that I had feel like they’re stuffed too tight in my throat, and they can’t seem to bubble up.

“Yahweh is not pleased with me,” she says coolly, cocking her head to the side as she looks Khiara over, as if she were nothing special. “I cannot understand why. That idiotic prophesy of his will still come to fruition regardless of my curse. It is a prophesy. They always come to fruition in one way or another. Hardly ever as planned.”

I suddenly find my words. “She’s going to die once the Battle arrives. Her health has been deteriorating rapidly. How is that fair? Just because her parents were idiots, you
had
to curse her?”

Morrigan shrugs like my opinion is of no importance to her, which it probably isn’t, seeing as lesser Gods and Goddesses see my kind as their less powerful, annoying little cousins. She runs her fingers through Khiara’s damp hair, and then begins braiding a small plait into her hair in an almost motherly fashion.

“A moment, Camael,” she says, holding up a hand for me to be quiet.

When she is finished her braiding, she turns to me and smiles. “Her parents sealed her fate. Death
is
inevitable. That does not mean that she will die
forever
. Her soul is pure, Camael. I am not cruel; you would do well to remember that.”

She begins to fade, and before I can ask what exactly she means, she says, “The braid makes her look like a warrior.”

~*~
 

When I wake up I’m in Cael’s bed, pulled close to his side. It seems I’ve been doing a lot of passing out and waking up lately, and I genuinely hope I have reached my quota for a long time.

“Hey,” he whispers when he sees that I’m awake. “Morrigan appeared in the clearing and stopped your seizure by putting you to sleep. You’ve been out cold for four hours now, and we’ve been home for three.”

“She was there?” I’m rather dumbfounded.

“Yes,” he says solemnly. “And she wasn’t a very big help in the information department.”

He relays everything that happened with Morrigan, and then falls silent for a second before asking, “What happened when you had that seizure?”

I stiffen, trying to remember the images that flashed before my eyes. “Something important is going to happen in that clearing. I just…don’t know what, exactly. But there were people and they were fighting, and then I saw…” I strain my mind to recall exactly what I saw, but the images have already begun to float into the deep recesses of my mind where I can’t reach.

It’s okay,
whispers Cael, using our connection.
We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.

“Alright,” I murmur, just before I cuddle closer to the warmth of his body and let sleep take over my exhausted soul.

Thirty

Some of the Fae that Grandma Coal personally called in have arrived, and I don’t think anybody could have prepared me for the sheer amount of awe they inspire when all together. They’re camping out in the woods behind Liam’s house in tents. The fifteen Elves with their pointed ears though nothing like in the movies, all about seven feet tall, are idly sitting by the fire, holding what looks like arrows and breathing on them reminiscent of how Grandma Coal breathed on Cara and I when she healed us. Cara informs me that they’re embedding magic into them. The smallest of them all and about the size of my hand, Pixies, all perch on the shoulders of the Elves. There are twenty-five Pixies in total.

Ten of the eighteen Nymphs have chosen to be in fox form, and they languish in the heat of the fire, and when they become too hot roll in the snow, barking with appreciation. I’ve never seen anything like it and I can’t help but soak it up.

Three of the eight Nymphs who chose not to be in their fox forms are currently standing with me and Cara at the edge of the forest, giving Cara tips of the trade. There are only two Nymph Halflings – Halfling meaning half Fae and half human – as opposed to the four Elf Halflings; Cara and, ironically a boy from town named Paul Virtue who as it turns out, is Cara’s cousin though not by blood, but by element. It makes sense, now that I think about how awkward he was being when I caught him with her in the car – they’d just been talking about a gathering they were supposed to attend out in Portland.

Of the two, Cara is the most advanced as it turns out, mostly because she was able to shift into a fox at all, an accomplishment which is rather rare for a Halfling, but also because she can do other magic that isn’t part of her element. For some reason, she’s more Fae than human and her powers just keep getting stronger the more she uses them, since before she had to use them in secret most of the time. But Paul, it seems, can hardly produce enough fire to light a match.

“I don’t know if I’ll be much help,” he says, “but I’ll do my best when the time comes.”

Trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about, I pat him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Any help is appreciated…for whatever is going to happen.”

“You don’t know?” asks a woman with dark brown skin and bright blonde dreadlocks, a Wind Nymph named Melania whose accent marks her as a sister Mainer. She looks to be about thirty years of age, but insists she is actually fifty by saying, “The Wind has kept me young.”

“Welll,” Cara draws the word out, “no. It’s a long story, none of it very good,” she bites her lip shyly and I smile. She’s always playing damage control when I open my dumb mouth and say something idiotic.

“How’s about we hear all about it when dinner arrives,” says a voluptuous middle aged woman named Patty, with a thick Australian accent. Her tanned skin and brown hair mark her as an Earth Nymph.

“Vicky and Tristan should be back with the food soon,” says Cara. “If they don’t kill each other first. It’s just pizza and fries for most of us, but there are veggies and berries for anybody who doesn’t want that. They agreed on Millie’s Pies for desert, since that’s about the only place you can actually find edible goods outside of Cael’s shop – that would be Khiara’s boyfriend – who is probably the best baker in this whole town. Millie’s the oldest person in this town, actually. She turns eighty in four months!”

“Wow,” says Melania.  “Well then, I guess we’ll talk when the food gets here.”

“Guess so,” I say quietly. So many eyes are on me, it feels so strange. “Guess so.”

Over a large bonfire, people’s stories are slowly told, and information is divulged as the snow falls above us, never making it past the flames. Patty talks about her plane ride over from Australia, and how she grew up adopted by a human couple, never having known her birth parents due to their deaths at the hands of superstitious religious bigots. She and Melania met when she first visited the States just eight years ago.

Cael talks of his Fall, and how he became my guardian, Vicky talks about her involvement, though nothing too personal about herself, and of course Cara talks enough for both her and Tristan because he’s too shy to speak up. Jack stays quiet as well.

Interestingly, it turns out that most of the Pixies of the world live in various countries around Europe, and only a few in the Americas. They can become invisible to the human eye at the drop of a hat, which explains why there are hardly any reported sightings.

Liam and Samael – who has asked me to call her Samantha at all times now, since I refer to the other angels by their human names and she felt a little left out – don’t talk much, but Lisa chats about all sorts of random things, and what being Nephilim is like; Paul had asked, timidly raising his hand like we’re in school.

Sam is quiet for most of the night, happy to sit on my lap and listen to everybody, sometimes fiddling with my necklace, but around eight he begins to yawn, and by ten o’clock he’s all but passed out in my arms.

Samantha moves to bring him to bed but Sam says, “I want Aunt Ki-Ki to do it.”

“Alright honey. I’ll be in to give you your kiss soon.” Samantha smiles and sits back down. She seems almost relieved that her son has taken to me like he has.