Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (33 page)

A branch snapped in the woods. “Shhh,” Jackson breathed against her ear, sending a shiver through her that she ignored. He pivoted her with him behind a thick oak as a movement flitted around several trees. It stopped. A cloak, silvery blond hair, piercing eyes that moved directly to their hiding place.

“I will kill you Semiazaz, you and your horde,” the man spoke with calm arrogance. “Show yourself.”

“No,” Jackson whispered before Kailin could even lean that way.

Tuto landed silently onto a branch above. The man had to have seen the bird though he kept his eyes level with Kailin’s gaze. As if he saw her clearly.

“Spooked by an owl, Druce?”

Druce? Kailin held her breath. This was her father.

Another man approached from the other direction. As his ethereal form slid against the tree branches, they shriveled, bending limply toward the ground. He moved closer, and his body solidified. She tried to gather her magic but it lay limp in her body just like the tree limbs. Jackson’s arms had moved around her and he held her back up against his chest.

“Eógan?”

“Yes, Druce, it is I.”

“Drakkina said that Semiazaz had absorbed your spirit, killed you completely.”

“Semiazaz can’t contain me, or you. His hands are tied to those other twelve demons. Their powers are tangled up in the chaos of confinement. My mate made certain of that long before you existed. But they are growing stronger.”

“I will hunt them. Kill them before they can harm anymore of the world, before they can grow more powerful.”

Druce practically crackled in the darkness, his energy was so strong. Kailin could feel its resonance like a deep chime within her. His power was magnificent, beautiful in its complexity and mass. But something was wrong.

“Strong and eager,” the one called Eógan said and smiled. “But you do not have Gilla by your side.”

“And you do not have Drakkina,” Druce threw back.

Eógan laughed. “Let us hunt as brothers then.”

“I would keep them safe, keep Gilla from it all.”

“Aye, wizard, leave Gilla to tend your daughters and the bairn.”

“The bairn?” Druce said and paused, his head cocked as if he listened to some warning. Kailin felt his energy billow like a cloud within him and the hairs on her arms rose in readiness. “You know about the bairn?”

“News travels fast,” Eógan said. “The babe is special.”

“You have been away. How—?”

Eógan’s smile cracked, lips pulling back suddenly in agony. In the darkness the shadows along his face changed places as if the skin stretched over moving bones. Kailin’s throat tightened, preventing breath or warning. Druce backed up, magic in the palms of his hands.

“Run, Druce,” Eógan’s voice was the same yet strained through a wall of suffering. “It is a tr…a…p.” Eógan spit out the final “p” and doubled over.

Druce glanced back toward the trees where Kailin stood.
Run home, child. Kailin, run to Mama
, settled firmly into her mind. Kailin sucked in a breath, afraid to move anything non-essential to living.

Eógan lifted his head as a long white beard grew rapidly from his chin. His shoulders broadened and he grew upward, his bulk carrying him high into the silvery, moon-painted trees.

Druce released a bolt of magic straight into the growing, twisting mass of demonic souls. The giant staggered under the impact. “Strong, but alone,” the voice came twisted and tangled as if many pitches spoke as one, creating a haphazard echo. “Foolish.”

“Be gone, Semiazaz!” Druce ordered and bombarded the demons with a volley of mystical energy, spears of white light at various parts. Strikes hit at different angles, searching for weaknesses. “Take your evil brethren from these lands else die.”

The voices laughed, the pitches sliding along Kailin’s spine. She felt Jackson pull her tighter against him behind the tree. She surrendered into the cloak of his arms, hiding her magic from the demons. Yet her father had felt her presence. Would Semiazaz and his forced companions also sense her magic?

“When else would we meet you alone without your mate?”

“Come then,” Druce said with calm determination. “Truth and love make my magic stronger than yours. Let this be the final battle then.”

“Without your family as witness? What a shame none will watch you destroy the plague of humankind. Perhaps we should summon them. Eehh…your girls.” A grin spread upon the bearded face high up under the trees.

“You will die now,” Druce roared and cupped his hands just like Kailin had done on the desert. His magic surrounded the twisting group coalesced into the image of Semiazaz.

“No,” Kailin whispered. “It doesn’t work.”

“Silence,” Jackson whispered in her ear. Kailin focused on the warmth of his breath against her skin.

Druce shot white magic into the center of the mass but instead of shattering the evil, the mass absorbed it, pooling into itself just as Kailin’s magic had done. He would fail. Druce, her father. She knew he would. Drakkina had told her that the demons had killed him, stripped his magic. The pearl of a tear slipped over her bottom lid. Maybe she could change the past. Maybe—

“No!” Druce roared and threw his magic with a push of his clenched hands. Kailin yanked away from Jackson, summoning her powers to add to her father’s.
No!
Drakkina’s voice penetrated in her mind as Jackson’s arms hugged her back into him. The witch’s voice pierced, nearly immobilizing her.

“Let go!” Kailin yelled but her words were caught in the inky roar of pure evil as it crushed like a black wave down upon her father. She watched in desperate shock as her father crumpled under the weight of what looked like a ten foot wave of dark water that then morphed into a circle of…of beasts. They all stood within feet of one another though they looked like they strained to be apart. Kailin recognized the one old man with the long beard called Semiazaz. But there were others, terribly fierce with gnashing teeth. One catlike woman hissed and scratched the air as if she wished to tear Druce’s withered body apart.

“Take it!” a demon with black wings roared. “Then we can take Gilla.”

“Yes, Semiazaz, take his magic before he’s totally dead,” the feline hissed.

Kailin tried to pull away, although she wasn’t sure what her magic could do against so much power, not when her father’s immense magic had failed. But she didn’t get the chance.

Kailin felt her body melt, unravel as Drakkina’s words whispered in the background. “On the currents of my power gifted by the Earth Mother, send them now…” Kailin tried to close her eyes but it already seemed as if her lids were gone. She watched the arc of moon chasing the sun five times before dark clouds obliterated both spheres. Her body grew heavy as once again she and Jackson and the orb landed. This time they were within the ten stones she’d spent most of her life researching. Except now there was a house surrounding the stone slab with tall stalks of corn thrashing from the wind in a side garden. Herbs lay against the ground as if trampled. The two of them stood near a back window. One of the wooden shutters hung crooked due to a missing peg. Outside the stone circle on the far side stood a line of wolves.

“Damn…” Jackson swore softly. “Are those snakes, chopped up snakes?”

Kailin glanced toward the front door where she could see what looked like sliced snakes writhing in the cornflowers growing along a pebbled path. Their blood splattered against the lavender heads and yellow buttercups.

“Ugh,” she said, barely heard above the wind. “Scottish adders.”

“Is that where we are? Scotland?”

She nodded. “These are the stones I’ve studied my whole life. This is where I’m from.”

“Guessing that this isn’t here now. I mean we’re here now but now isn’t our now, is it?”

She shook her head. “It’s a long time ago.”

Kailin bent to peek through the swaying shutter into the large cottage. It seemed to be a bright day but the clouds covered most of the sun. She could make out thatch raining down inside from the roof. There, near the slab, stood a woman and a child. Kailin strained to hear them but she couldn’t.

“Mama?” she whispered and watched as the woman hugged the child tightly and kissed her. She tucked a large white feather into her dress. The dress! It looked like the same dress she’d been wearing when Anthony had found her in the pharaoh’s tomb. Tingles ran up her back.

Jackson slammed Kailin up against the house and covered her mouth. “Demons coming.” His hot breath in her ear sent the brewing panic into a heart pounding rush. He slowly removed his hand but put his finger to his lips. Kailin flattened herself against the house and peered through.

The woman held her arms wide. Her long braid swung down her back to her calves as she stared up at the ceiling. “I freely gift ye with my most dangerous power, to move things, elements, solids, people. On the currents of my blood, on the currents of my love, on the currents of my power given by the Earth Mother, send her now within my last remaining thread.”

Kailin couldn’t breathe. The child reached for Gilla, her mother, but she was already thinning into a long thread of power that shot off up through a tiny crack in the thatch. Straight to
nineteenth-century Egypt.

Above the wind and branches hitting the house, a resonating chanting had begun. The demons stood as they had in the clearing but instead of Semiazaz at the front it looked to be her father, Druce.

“Come out, Gilla. It is I, your husband. I have control of these demons now. Come out, love!”

“You are no longer Druce,” Gilla screamed from within. Anger pinched her face. “You killed Druce and now you’ve come for me and my children.”

Gilla ran to the hearth and yanked out a stone, her fingers bleeding at the effort of scratching at the mortar. Once it dropped out she thrust her hand in and cursed. “No! Where did you take it, Druce?”

Kailin glanced at the orb she once again held in the crook of her arm. The orb had been given to the pharaoh by a magical man who made him promise to gift it to someone with the same dragonfly birthmark. Had Druce taken the orb and hidden it in ancient Egypt before the demons had killed him? Could the orb help Gilla now?

No
, came Drakkina’s voice.
Watch, learn, hide
. Kailin sniffed at the tears coursing down her cheeks as she watched her mother run across the room and scoop up a baby out of a wooden cradle. The bairn Semiazaz, as Eógan, had mentioned. The one that was somehow special.

The baby looked so small. Another sister? It must be only a week or so old. Yet its eyes were open wide. They stared…straight at Kailin. She gasped and for a brief moment crouched down. Foolish; a newborn baby couldn’t even see across a room that far let alone give her away to the woman holding it.

Trees thrashed wildly around the standing stones. Wildflowers and homegrown vegetables lay flat where rocks and magic had trampled them. The demons couldn’t stretch all the way around the perimeter so she and Jackson were safe from their sight, but not their animals.

“Wolves.” Jackson crouched next to her. “Where the hell is Drakkina?”

Kailin shook her head and peeked again into the room. Gilla held the baby on her lap while sitting on top of the stone slab. She kissed its head and smiled calmly at it. She spoke quietly against its miniature ear.

She looked upward. “Drakkina! Where are you? I beg you! Save my bairn. I have no magic left!” She placed the little baby over her shoulder and gently patted its back while she cupped its light baby hair. “Please, Drakkina. I had to use the power to send the girls. There’s nothing left.”

The baby again fastened its pale eyes directly on the window where Kailin hid. Could it sense her behind the swaying shutter? Where was the baby now? Dead? The thought twisted Kailin’s gut. She’d been saved, but now there was nothing left to send her last sister or her mother.

“Drakkina!” screeched Gilla as the ceiling began to cave in, thatch raining down. Gilla covered the baby with the wide sleeve of her dusty white robe. Drakkina appeared in the room and relief swelled tears out of Kailin’s eyes. She’d rescue them.

“I can’t help,” Drakkina said sadly, pushing back Gilla’s sleeve.

“Aye, ye can send the bairn like I sent the girls.”

Drakkina shook her ethereal head, dragonflies flitting around her sparkling hair.

Fury clenched inside Kailin.

“There she is,” Jackson whispered. “Drakkina! Get us out of here,” Jackson whisper yelled.

That’s Drakkina of the past, Kailin. The past cannot be changed without worse repercussions
. Kailin turned her head. Another Drakkina looked at her, lips and eyes tight with regret.

“So you left them to die and you’re just going to let it happen again?” Kailin accused, judgment and ice tightening the lines of her face. Jackson looked past Kailin into the room and then back at the Drakkina floating outside.

The wolves stood at the perimeter of the circle, a claw’s space just beyond the monoliths. One would snap and the others would follow. Tails bristled and saliva dripped like they were starving and incensed by the smell of fresh, taunting prey.

“If they cross that line, I’m letting go of Kailin,” Jackson warned. “Just get us out of here.”

“No,” Kailin said. “We have to help them.”

Drakkina floated closer.
Your mother knew that she couldn’t let her magic fall into the demons’ hands. That’s why she sent each of you with one of her powers. It was necessary to protect the world and you. Don’t let her efforts and death be in vain, Kailin
.

“But the baby?”

Has its own powers
. Drakkina’s mouth tightened. She wasn’t telling everything.
You must go.

“Holy Lord,” Kailin breathed as she watched through the slanted shutter. A black oily cloud roiled down the chimney.

“They’re crossing the line,” Jackson said and released Kailin’s arm.

Magic shot up inside Kailin, throbbing on the waves of her terror and fury. She didn’t even glance behind her but sent a pulse of magic there. Several cries and whimpers came from the advancing beasts.