As one they struck.
The circle constricted, creating a noose that strangled the Shantel elemental, siphoning its power away.
Brina could have interfered. She and Jay had summoned the elemental. They could have commanded the others to leave it; they could have claimed its power for themselves.
And such power it would have been!
I’m sorry, Brina said to it. Not just for the horrors of Midnight; that was not what had truly undone this elemental. She was apologizing for keeping away from the Shantel the one person who had been able to speak to it, and hear its voice, and let it be truly alive. Without its sakkri, it had been voiceless and helpless.
The Shantel elemental buckled, unraveling. Other elementals stole its memories, all the thoughts that gave it form, ripping them away like children tearing paper off Christmas presents.
Jay and Brina both collapsed to their knees as those memories lashed at them, seeking new homes. They accepted the ones they wanted, some beautiful and some terrible, some as ancient as the land itself and some as recent as Brina’s trying to hang herself from the rafters and Pet struggling for hours with the knowledge that her mistress had not given her any orders regarding cutting her down, but surely she couldn’t intend to stay that way forever.…
That which was immortal could not die. But without mortal memories to hold it together, it could not maintain its consciousness.
Brina whispered the Shantel’s name once again, but received no response. The entity had been reduced to a mere child of its kind, barely sentient, with no recollection of what it had just done.
It had no physical form in the room, but she could sense it, and she knew it rested deeply.
“It’s over?” Jay asked, looking up, his expression as dazed as Brina felt.
One of the ill spoke up—no, this being was beyond ill. Brina knew that the human form she was looking at was deceased, though it had been appropriated by one of the elementals.
“Leona has been injured. Weakened,” it said. “She cannot hold all of her bonds any more. Many will die yet.” A wail arose from somewhere in the crowd, before the elemental added, “Unless they are willing to make other arrangements.”
“We can pick up the slack, so to speak,” another voice said. This elemental was gentler, but Brina knew it was hungry as well.
Jay started to speak. “My family—”
“We are grateful for your help. Looking after your kin is the least we can do,” one of the voices offered, before another swiftly interjected, “Leona’s mortal children are numerous, of course. It may take more than one of us to save them.”
Some of the voices sounded kind; the last one just sounded sly. Leona had been the most powerful of the elementals. Now she had been laid low, and though other elementals had saved her, they did not plan to let her regain the same level of power ever again. That meant claiming her weakened bonds as their own. It would save lives—if it wasn’t too late—but this world was never going to be the same again.
Brina looked at Jay, wondering whether the new world painted this day would be better than the one before, or even the one that would have resulted had they not interfered with Shantel’s plans. He heard the thought, pondered, and then said, “I need a nap.”
Brina nodded. Others could clean up the mess left behind … whatever was left behind. They had done their job.
CHAPTER 27
JAY COULD NOT rest until he had made several phone calls ensuring that those he loved were still alive. Some were in critical condition, but if there was a spark of life left within them, he trusted the elementals to save them.
For their own purposes, perhaps, but the elementals would save them nonetheless.
Next, he decided to sleep for a week. Unfortunately, the rest of the world insisted on getting in the way of this triumphant hero’s nap—including Brina, who he had thought would be on his side.
She shook him and demanded he stand up because she wanted a model right now. He had no idea where she had found the materials. When he looked up with every intention of telling her to come back in another seven days, he had the irresistible desire to kiss her instead. So he did. And then he modeled.
Brina painted in a new way. She used her brushes and her oils—with windows open despite the frigid winter air—but occasionally she reached for the canvas and caressed it, sliding fingers over wet or dry paint. The image would shift, lines and tones responding to the pictures in her head in a way that normal paint could not.
Strangely, she was neither disturbed by this development nor delighted. She merely considered it a new tool, one she was happy to get to know, but she never questioned it. Jay would say that she took it for granted, but he might as well have said that she took everything for granted.
For Brina, each moment was new, as it is, and perfect.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one asking for his time. Some of the people who insisted on bothering him brought good things, like food. Others wanted things from him.
Jay, what’s going on? Jay, our magic is doing odd things. Jay, so-and-so has recovered from the flu but now keeps shapeshifting into a chicken.
Okay, he hadn’t heard the bit about the chicken specifically, but there had been reports of unexpected shapeshifting, especially among those who had been in the circle when the elementals had been summoned. Powers that people had long controlled were gone, but others spontaneously manifested. Some of those new powers were gifts. Some were darker, ranging from empathy like Jay’s—but without a lifetime to learn how to use it or control it—to power over life and death, healing’s inverse.
Individuals who before had only needed to eat as humans did found themselves needing to feed, while others who had fed on blood or power for centuries now had entirely different hungers.
The world had changed. Jay still didn’t know how many of Midnight’s trainers and traders had survived. Most of the vampires he knew had no interest in updating him, and having just barely saved the world from his last series of best intentions, Jay believed that it might be best to let this sleeping dog lie. For now.
He had other priorities.
Jay stood next to Jeremy as the groom waited, struggling not to fidget or wipe his sweaty palms on his tuxedo pants. Something to do with saving the world, or at least Caryn’s life, or maybe just the super-flu leaving much of the original wedding party feeling under the weather, had caused them to promote Jay from usher to groomsman.
The human looked good—though, these days, human might not have been the most accurate word. Jeremy had been born human, but he had also been in the circle when the Shantel elemental had been summoned. No one knew quite what had touched the doctor-in-training, but Jay knew Jeremy’s eyes had a phosphorescence visible when the room was dark, and he tended not to notice anymore when no lights were on. So far, that was the extent of his manifested power; maybe that was all there would be.
Whatever he was, Jeremy could still sweat. He looked to Jay anxiously. He had all the faith in the world that Caryn would appear and walk down that aisle … but what if she didn’t? What if she had changed her mind? What if she was …
The music rose. Caryn had chosen “Colors of the Wind” as her wedding march.
It was beautiful; the bride was beautiful.
Jay barely managed not to laugh out loud as Brina’s idle thought reached him: So provincial, so traditional. Nothing original. Beautiful dress, but portraits of brides in their beautiful dresses are a dime a dozen.
Her mind went back to wandering more interesting paths. In the last days, Brina had not regained her vampirism. Jay knew she had considered contacting Kaleo, the one who had changed her nearly four hundred years ago, though she had not spoken of it out loud. She hadn’t decided what she planned to do. At Jay’s prompting, she had called Nikolas and officially given him permission to take charge of all her “property,” to do with as he saw fit. SingleEarth had accepted several of the slaves into their psychiatric rehabilitation program.
/> She was getting used to taking care of herself, and being independent, just as she was getting used to her heartbeat, and her breath.
Jay was getting used to her primal, childlike joy. They had taken a break from painting once when Brina had needed fresh air, and she had followed him, running through the forest, delighted by the falling dust of snow. With Lynx by their side, they had leapt, tumbled into snowbanks, and reveled in the crispness of nature.
Jay fervently hoped she didn’t choose to become a vampire again.
Especially since he was pretty sure she had the makings of a powerful witch.
It had taken Jay’s kind many millennia to develop their powers into what they were these days—the Vidas with their ability to manipulate raw power, the Smoke line’s ability to heal, and all the other specialties Jay knew only a little of. Now they were all back at the beginning again. None of them knew what they were or who they might be in coming generations.
Jeremy and Caryn—would they be the parents of a new line of witches? Or of something else entirely? For that matter, what might Jay’s children be, if he chose to have children?
At that moment, all that mattered was the way the crystals on Caryn’s gown sparkled in the light, wreathing her in rainbows. It wasn’t a strange new power that gave her such a glow—no, it was love, and hope, and relief, and joy.
She smiled up at her husband-to-be with absolutely no concern about what Jeremy might be or might become. It didn’t matter to her. She knew who he was. Who cared what he was?
His parents cared, more than a little. A few people in the audience were simmering with resentment and built-up anger that Jay suspected might lead to a fistfight in the lobby during the reception.
Jay tried to come up with a plan to defuse the potential mayhem. After all, Jeremy had given him this job because he had unique talents that were supposed to help him avoid bloodshed over the wedding cake.
“Do you have the rings?”
Oh—and that!
Jay did have the rings. He passed them to Jeremy, and then there wasn’t much more for Jay to do except stand there and look interested while letting his mind wander across the thoughts of all those assembled.
It was amazing how few of them were thinking about the recent illness, or all the loss, or their fears of the future. All their thoughts were on this day, this moment, as Jeremy and Caryn leaned toward each other to kiss.…
Meanwhile, in a small but elite penthouse bar in New York City …
Kaleo and Theron leaned back and watched fireworks from the balcony. No disaster could keep humans down long, it seemed.
“I knew a Malinalxochitl witch once, but I never had the magic myself,” Theron commented. “The Azteka were mostly after my time. So why do I suddenly find myself doing things like this?”
He glanced at the candle flickering at the center of the table. Theron held up a hand, and the tiny ball of flame came to his palm like an obedient puppy. With a flick of his wrist he juggled it to the other hand, and then sent it back to the candle, where it flared at least three feet high before settling back to its normal and natural state.
Kaleo watched the display and shook his head. “I’m sure you will make good use of this new talent. It is more useful than some of the aberrations that have come to my attention.”
“I’ve heard the rumors, of course,” Theron said. “I’m looking into them, and trying to determine which of the wild speculations is most correct. So far, most of what I’ve heard has been barely credible, and some of it has been outright impossible … like vampires turning human.”
Kaleo nodded, his gaze going distant. “Indeed.”
“I heard about Brina,” Theron said. “What are you planning to do?”
“Legally, I suppose she’s mine, since she was before the change. I would appreciate it if you could help me spread the word that I will enforce that claim, should anyone attempt to harm her.”
“Do you intend to bring her in?”
“No, I think not,” Kaleo said thoughtfully. “I killed her once, and discovered then that she is a very different woman as one of us than she was as a mortal.”
“She’ll die,” Theron pointed out.
“Nothing beautiful lasts forever.”
And in the heart of New Mayhem …
Fala stared at the corpse in front of her as it rapidly deteriorated. It wasn’t rotting; she knew what it looked like when a body rotted. This one was decaying in a different way, like a mummy in dry sand.
Moira and Jager had both been unconscious, wrapped in wild dreams, for days. Fala had drawn on magic in order to sustain them, magic she had barely used since she was a human sorcerer. When they had woken, the three of them had hunted like wild animals, desperate to renew their strength. They had barely survived.
Apparently, some others had not.
The body in front of Fala, which she suspected would be dust within days, was wearing one of Silver’s thousand-dollar suits. It was also in his office.
Should she do something for him? Maybe she could bring a mortal in here, slit its throat over the body, and see if the cascade of blood would revive the decomposing ancient.
She kicked it instead, sending debris flying like ash into the air and causing the body to crumble further. That way, she didn’t have to wonder whether or not he would wake up.
She went looking for Aubrey, to see if he had survived this cataclysm. Given her bad luck, he probably had. It seemed like the younger vampires had fared better. Moira had been in better shape than Jager; Aubrey was younger than Moira by about five centuries. Sadly, he was probably fine.
And in a small town in Maryland …
Kyla leant her shoulder to clearing wreckage from what had, a few days before, been the entrance to the Dragon’s Nest club. More recently, it had been a sick ward for serpiente who had fallen ill, including Kyla’s brother, Lucien Cobriana.
Somewhere in the worst of the fever, Lucien had started raving in the ancient language, too rapidly for Kyla to follow with her limited understanding of the tongue and the fever filling her own brain. It had sounded like he was arguing with someone.
Then the ground had started to shake, as if the earth itself were shivering. Lucien had opened eyes that were no longer just the rust-red of cobra eyes but that had burned like liquid magma. He had grabbed her arm. Dragged her up. Shoved her to the door, and commanded, “Run!”
He had evacuated most of the serpents in the nest, but when the ground had collapsed, it had swallowed him. Kyla hadn’t been able to inform the rest of the family, because no one had been able to reach anyone else in the serpiente royal house. All she could do was supervise the rescue attempt, and pray.
And in the Le Coire manor …
“Are you ever going to tell us what the hell that was all about?” Brent asked.
“Once I fully understand it, and know what I am allowed to tell you, I will consider whether or not I want to bother,” Ryan replied.
Samantha sighed. It had been a difficult few weeks. She knew that whatever had happened had involved others of her kind, but she hadn’t had enough power to participate in the fight … or to even know who was fighting, or over what, or who had won.
Ryan had only come downstairs to eat. Otherwise, they hadn’t seen him in days; he had been sequestered in his private ritual area, trying to communicate with the ancient powers to which his family had long ago tied themselves.
All he had reported so far was that there had been a major shift in power globally. No one currently in the room had been seriously affected, but word on the street was that many things had changed.
And in a coffee shop in Boston …
The three known as the Wild Cards sat around the same table where they often gathered to chat.
Rikai’s skin had returned to its flawlessly smooth porcelain, the scars hidden, and her muscles and joints were once again functioning as they had before the Inquisitors had treated her to the third degree. The elemental that had ridden her had b
een one she was already familiar with, a creature not of one of the pure elements—fire, earth, water, and air—but of agony and rage.
Xeke had fed once since they had returned from the forest, but it had been mostly out of habit. He suspected he didn’t need blood anymore. The power given to him by the elemental had shifted his needs. Thankfully, he had plenty of mortals willing to stay near him and sleep in his arms, keeping the power well fed and content … and he could still appreciate a macchiato, which this particular café made very well.
Renna leaned back and enjoyed her chai latte, already contemplating who she would choose as her narrator. As always, the others had been involved in forming the story, and she was left to write it.
Her power had changed, she thought, but who could really tell? She had been born an Arun witch, tainted by vampires, partially trained as a Triste, and now possessed more than one strain of shapeshifter power. All of that had been jumbled and reassembled. It would be fun to see what happened next.
She pulled out her laptop, flipped it open, and opened her word processor.
“I think the best place to start would be at Kendra’s Heathen Holiday,” Xeke said. “With Jay coming in from the snow.”
Renna nodded. She had visited the gala briefly, but too many people didn’t like her, mostly due to her propensity to tell the stories she learned, regardless of the preferences of those involved. But she knew how things had looked. She knew that Daryl’s Lady with a Falcon on Her Fist had stood in the front hall this year; Xeke had already told her how it had stopped Jay cold as he’d examined it, as if unsure whether he could love it for its beauty or should hate it for its creator.
Yes, she would begin there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMELIA ATWATER-RHODES wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was thirteen. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, Persistence of Memory, Token of Darkness, and All Just Glass. She has also written the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and a Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection; Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry, an IRA-CBC Young Adults’ Choice; and Wyvernhail. Poison Tree is her most recent novel. Visit her online at AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com.