Suddenly Sam (The October Trilogy) (14 page)

Upon the throne sat a tall, dark figure, but the angle of the view and the crackling of the fire ma
de it hard to see his face.

Stil
l, Logan knew who he was. Everyone there did.

“A king sat upon a lonely throne,” said Sam.

The figure on the throne stood and walked to a window. The scene switched, sharing his view. Gray and darkness stretched to the horizon. Indistinct shapes shifted here and there, ghosts in a ghostly world.

“The king had been crowned before time began
, and he tired of his throne. He dreamed of things he could not name, but wanted desperately.”

The scene changed again, shifting from grays to blurred greens and pulling way from the solitary king and his solemn land.

“But he had no faith in fortune, and believed it never granted kings their dreams.”

An aerial view of a very green land skirted by. The camera drew clo
ser to the ground until finally, it was focused upon what must have been an ancient –
ancient
– village.

“Until a
child was born whose soul was marked,” Sam continued.

The
bonfire view skirted through the archaic village until it focused on a woman with long red hair who was seated beside a campfire. She was dressed in a simple blue dress and a cloak of white. In her arms was a swaddled infant.

“
The moment the child cried out, the king heard it in his realm so far away. And he felt the first hope his soul had ever known.”

Ciara
, Logan thought.

Sam looked down at her
as if he’d heard the name spoke aloud, the acknowledgement in his stormy gaze all the confirmation she needed.

“H
e waited,” he continued. “And over the years, he watched her grow. Until the child was a woman, and he came to call upon her while she slept.”

The scene shifted and became the
nondescript, blurred-edged world of a person’s nightly dreams. Summer trees, their branches heavy with green became fall trees, and the leaves turned and then fell. A carpet of them covered the ground of a trail beneath the tree’s overhanging branches. It looked very, very familiar to Logan.

“In the witching hour, in the twilight, and in that in-between realm where the living remember the dead….”

On the bonfire screen, a girl walked through the woods. She was dressed in a long white gown and her red hair cascaded down her back in a gorgeous strawberry waterfall.

“And the dead can dance with the living.”

The beautiful girl entered an Autumn clearing. There, a tall figure dressed in black was waiting for her. She approached slowly, cautiously, and he offered her his hand. She took it.

They began to dance.

The image between the pillars of fire spun. Music whispered through the crackling flames to become discordant and cacophonous. A distant wind howled. Suddenly, the bonfire closed with a rush, shooting thousands of sparks straight up into the sky.

Logan gasped and looked up, as did everyone else. Above them, a darkening mass of clouds began to turn, swirling into themselves in a building tempest.

The storm
, Logan thought.

But the story teller was not finished yet.

“War came to the woman’s world, hot and red,” Sam went on, drawing everyone’s attention once more. He gestured to the fire, and it again parted, this time showing them a field of crosses.

Roman crosses
, Logan thought, her heart sinking. She’d learned about them in Mr. Lehrer’s class. She would never hurt Mr. Lehrer’s feelings by admitting as much, but it had been yet one more aspect of history that she’d disliked. She was just one of those people who would never understand the appeal of history, as to her, it seemed to be nothing but bloodshed, torture, disease, and death. In contrast, relatively little of positive consequence was ever recorded. Either that, or relatively little of positive consequence ever occurred.

When she’d learned about how Romans had used crosses for hundreds and thousands of their vic
tims, stringing them up to litter the countryside with these garish aspects of torture, she had found it both odd and disturbing that so many people would choose to wear chains displaying these Roman torture devices around their necks. To her, it was no different than choosing to wear a guillotine. Or an iron maiden. Or a rack.

In the bonfire, the world was painted red with the blood of innocents. It stained the grass on islands in what was now known as Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. Logan wanted to look away, but she knew it would do no good.

She’d seen this before. It was there, in her memory – in
Ciara’s
.

“The woman was struck down,
” Sam told them.

The image went black. The crowd looked down, as if in mourning. Even the bonfire seemed to settle.

“And in the wake of this final journey, her marked soul made the promise it had been born to make,” said Sam.

His gaze returned to Logan, pinning her to the spot.

“But there is much fear of the unknown, and the woman’s spirit was strong. A secret within a promise – this was the web she weaved. A spell so powerful, it required the sacrifice of blood.”

Logan knew what he was talking about. Ciara had been promised to Samhain upon birth.
Fate had finally granted him his companion. When she took her final breath, she was to join him.

However, when that final breath arrived, she spurned him, casting another spell instead. With her final magic, she managed to turn herself into a ghost, casting
half of her soul into that incorporeal state from which even the Death God could not retrieve it.

The other half of her soul was snatched up by
fate and sent forward in time, with the intent that the Lord of the Dead might be given a second chance. The soul would enter a new mortal, and there would be fresh hope.

That new mortal
was Logan Wright.

Chapter Twenty

Dominic quietly watched from beyond the tree line. He crouched low in the shadows, his green eyes burning with fear and fury.

It had taken him a moment
to process what he was seeing: The bonfire, the masquerade costumes and masks, the floating candle flames that flickered unaided high above the grounds. Even the musicians were something out of a fairy tale dream. He’d seen paintings like this, and book covers. But seeing it firsthand was another experience altogether. Being surrounded with magic that defied reality was getting to him a little. He realized that he could be certain of nothing. And that was an uncomfortable sensation. He felt stunned.

But what stunned
him the most about the scene before him was Logan.

She was an impossible vision that he just couldn’t wrap his head around. The gown she wore appeared to have been made for her – and he would have bet his blood that it was. She was wrapped in the
colors of every aspect of darkness, and the deep, silk hues were a stark, tantalizing contrast to the creaminess of her skin.

She was regal and graceful and
… she was beyond beautiful.

Every nerve ending in his body hummed t
o life at the sight of her. Every ounce of adrenaline he had was dumped into his blood stream. He felt awed. He felt protective. She was magnificent.

Magnificent
.

And he had no idea what the hell she was doing wearing a gown like that at a time like this, in the middle of this crazy-ass situation.
It boggled his mind.

Dom blinked and squinted, re-focusing his gaze.

She wasn’t wearing her Celtic life pendant. Her neck was bare.

He pulled the pendant out of his pocket and stared down at it.
Now he recognized it for certain. There was a tiny nick in the silver that he remembered seeing on hers earlier.

Dom looked back up at her.
Had she taken it off of her own accord? Willingly?

He couldn’t accept that. Someone there in that crowd had taken it from her. It wasn’t broken, so it hadn’t been ripped away.

None of this made any sense.

But in this realm, nothing could be taken for granted and
everything
was pretty much insane, so Dominic closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to take it in stride. He was good at that. He was fast at making adjustments. You had to be when your mother died on you and your father was overwhelmed. That was life.

He slipped the pendant back into his pocket and
continued to listen and watch from where he knelt beneath the low-lying branches. Information was power. The more he had, the better his chances of getting Logan out of there and getting them both out of October Land.

The people with gray skin were everywhere, and they separated Dominic from Logan, who sat at th
e front near the bonfire. She was also decidedly close to the man who was beginning to tell a
story
. It was no ordinary story, as became exceedingly clear when the bonfire split in two and a movie screen of sorts appeared.

Dom’s
gaze narrowed on the tall, dark figure doing the talking. He had to admit he’d never laid eyes on a man so imposing. There was no hint of humanity to him. This was not a man, but a monster.

Or… a god?

Dom straightened a little.

It would make sense.
Something
had to have happened to Sam when he’d been expelled from Dom’s body. And that man up there before the bonfire most definitely had what it took to be the Lord of the Dead.

Dom continued to listen as the story unfolded, all but
confirming his theory.

The man’s voice carried clearly and beautifully across the distance, and with each word, each damning sentence, a well of dread o
pened up deeper and wider inside Dominic.

Logan was promised to
him? According to the tale, her soul had been marked more than two thousand years ago.

Dom felt a constriction in his chest, and realized he wasn’t breathing. That dread was spreading, seizin
g his body in its fearsome grip.

T
here she sat, Logan Wright, the story telling student he had helped off the ground during recess in the fourth grade. The girl he’d secretly watched and longed for over the next eight years. The one he felt a connection to and had gone through so much with. She just sat there all wrapped up in that gorgeous dress as if she were some sort of material present to be ribboned and handed over.

It was almost impossible for him to accept
.

And the people around her with their glowing eyes and gray skin didn’t help matters. It was clear by their behavior that they adored Samhain. They gazed at him, rapt in attention. Like obedient little pets.

Dominic had no idea how he was going to defeat Samhain, much less his several dozen minions.

But
what perhaps frightened him the most – once he allowed himself to even dwell upon it – was that Logan wasn’t fighting them. She wasn’t glaring at Sam. She didn’t look upon him with any kind of hatred. Instead, she listened quietly, and the looks she exchanged with the Death God were deeper than hatred or fear. They were the kinds of looks you exchanged with someone you’d known forever. They were the looks of memories.

She fits in here
, he thought. It was a disturbingly illuminating thought. But it was there, and he couldn’t ignore it. Logan had always loved fall, loathed summer, hidden from the sun, adored the night. Halloween was her favorite season by miles and miles.

A
nd as much as he would hate to admit it, Samhain’s story had struck a nerve with Dominic. There was a bitter sweetness to it that begged for a happy ending. It was only more bitter, and only more sweet, that it would require the sacrifice of a young girl who had a life to live elsewhere, who was needed in her own world… by so many.

A
flash of an image passed before his mind, and Dominic stilled, closing his eyes. It was his mother’s smile. He distantly heard her laugh. It was a memory, faint but clear.

Dom opened his eyes as the image faded, and a steel resolve shot through him.
No
, he told himself. He couldn’t let this happen. However “perfect” she would be as Samhain’s queen, Logan had a family. She had younger siblings who looked up to her, and she had a father and mother who loved her.

She has a mom.
Logan had a
mother
, and that mother had problems, but what human being didn’t have problems? Her life hadn’t been an easy one. And at least she was
alive
. Logan needed her more than she could possibly know. And her mother needed Logan more than words could possibly say.

And
… Dom needed her too.

A crack of thunder drew hi
s attention from the bonfire. He glanced up. Heavy clouds had gathered, dark gray and imposing. They swirled together as if the sky had turned on a mighty blender. Lightning split the darkness in two, and thunder rolled low after, raising chills along Dominic’s arms despite his heavy leather jacket.