Iron Bones

  I flashed back to the first vision I had had at my house. “Is that iron?”

  She inclined her head. “For my protection, should your nature give way and you decide to attack me. It’s not likely to happen, but it’s not out of the range of possibility either.”

  I didn’t want to think about the iron there on the floor, or the idea that I might try to assault her. “Won’t those sides of me, both the Leannan Sidhe and Autumn’s Bane, recognize that they, too, are bound to Morgana?”

  “One would hope. Most likely, yes. But I’ve always taught my students to be prepared. Assume nothing. Expect nothing. Be open to what happens.”

  She finished the circle and whispered a few words. I had the sensation that an invisible barrier rose between us. I knew that if I stood to leave the circle now, I wouldn’t be able to cross it without getting a sharp burn from the iron.

  “We’re ready. I’ll get the tincture. You breathe deeply and try to relax. This won’t hurt.”

  She hustled over to the cabinet to the side and I tried to will my body into as relaxed a state as it could get. I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, and three drops that tasted somewhere between sweet and spicy landed on my tongue.

  The liquid absorbed and I waited. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, or what to expect.

  I flashed back to the time when Angel and I swiped a bottle of wine from Mama J.’s stash and snuck out of our bedroom, climbing the fire escape to the top of the roof. We drank the whole bottle, got drunk, and watched the stars come out as we talked about our plans for the future. We were sixteen, and I had been living with them for about eight months. We had been so full of plans—places we’d travel, and things we’d see.

  “I’m going to be a big-time newscaster,” Angel said. “My name will be in all of the magazines and I’ll travel all over and write about the places I see.”

  “I’ll go with you. I can take photographs, and scope out crimes to solve,” I had proclaimed. “I’m good at figuring out when something’s wrong.”

  Angel and I had spent most of the night on the roof, talking about one dream after another until Mama J. called Angel on her cell phone and told us to get our asses home. We somehow managed to climb down the fire escape without killing ourselves, but even though we ate an entire package of mints, Mama J. could smell the booze on us and she grounded us for a month. She made me trade places with DJ so that he had to sleep in his sister’s room. We weren’t allowed to talk together except at school and during meals, and Mama J. had taken away our TV privileges. That was the first and last time we drank until we were eighteen and in college.

  I blinked, wondering why the memory had suddenly flashed through my head so strongly, but then, like a rainbow, it shimmered, and vanished.

  I started to ask Marilee if the tincture was working, but my words came out garbled and I wasn’t entirely sure if I had spoken aloud. I tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness shot through me and so I lay down again. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, and for a moment I was terrified that maybe I was allergic to something in the tincture and had gone into anaphylaxis, but I forced myself to calm down. When I paid attention to my chest, I realized that I was breathing just fine. My tongue just felt clumsy and thick.

  I drifted further out, feeling like I was at sea. The room around me shifted, and I was in the ocean, surrounded by massive rolling breakers that crashed over me. I welcomed them in, embracing their energy as they swallowed me. As I sank in slow motion, giving in to the depths, they tugged me down. Bubbles streamed from my mouth, and I let the waves lull me into the half-light. My arms lazily drifted over my head as I sank, my hair streaming in the water, and yet I wasn’t gasping for air. I didn’t even know if I was breathing, but that didn’t frighten me either. I turned in the water, rotating slowly as the sea-green depths welcomed me in.

  I don’t know how long I drifted, but then a soft breeze washed over me and I began to realize that I was sitting on a shoreline. I dragged my fingers through the water that crashed along the dunes.

  Someone was walking toward me and I rose to my feet. My clothes were gone, and I was standing there in a ribbon of gossamer silk, which wound around me in a gravity-defying swirl, covering my breasts and groin.

  The woman who approached looked like me, only she seemed more vibrant, her skin a fairer shade of pale with a translucent bluish cast. Her hair was wrapped in intricate knotwork, the strands looping around and through each other. She was wearing a thin shift, translucent and filmy, and the gown floated from her shoulders, barely touching her skin.

  “Who are you?” I mustered up the question, but the words didn’t come. Yet I felt she understood me.

  “Take my hands and find out,” she whispered, holding out her hands.

  I stared at her fingers for a moment, then took them in my own. There was a pause, a fraction of a second where the thought I shouldn’t have done that ran through my mind, but then it was too late, and she had hold of me.

  She swept me into a dance, and we were whirling, spinning through a downpour that began the moment our fingers touched. The clouds had broken open, the storm had come. All around me, the lightning forked through the heavens, striking down to touch the water and sand. The storm both repelled and attracted me, and I reached for its core, longing to become part of it.

  The waves grew fractious, cresting across the sand, as the downpour—stirred by the wind—created a vortex of rain. We were right in its path. The rain slashed against us, cutting and cold, as the sky darkened even further.

  Yet still she held my hands fast, spinning on the beach, whirling me around in a dizzying blur. Yet still she held me firmly and I couldn’t let go. The storm grew louder, the rain thundering down. Lightning broke the sky again, and we were caught up by the gale, dancing among the forks that lit up the sky.

  She drew me closer, pulling me in, until we were spinning in a lover’s embrace, at the center of a waterspout. Dizzy, I closed my eyes, letting go of my thoughts. I couldn’t focus—my equilibrium had been stripped away—and I finally gave in to the dance, letting it encompass me as my mysterious partner pulled me even closer. There was no distinction between our bodies, and as she pressed against me, we began to merge.

  I fought my fear, wanting to keep myself separate, but then I realized that I couldn’t resist her, and under the rain and lightning and thunder, the boundaries came down and she flowed into me, and I allowed her to enter my thoughts.

  HUNGER. I WAS so hungry, but not for food. I wanted more. I wanted sex. I wanted someone to run his hands across my skin, to touch me in those places that I kept sacred. I wanted to open myself to him, to feel him enter me even as he became my servant. I wanted to sing to him, whisper in his ears in the night when he slept, drive him mad with visions of beauty.

  Hear my song. Come to me. Touch me. Taste me. Let me delight your soul. Let me inspire you and send you reeling into the passion that stems from that sacred mix of creativity and the drive to mate. I will be your muse. I will give you the world of dreams, and I will feed you delights untold, and you will be mine. To own. To possess. To sing you to sleep, and finally, to feed off of your hopes and dreams and your very life essence. And when you fall into that final slumber, far ahead of your years, you will remember me with blood and pain and passion…and you will die a husk, burned to a crisp for your vision and lust. And I will find another to inspire.

  I ran my hands down my body, moaning as my fingers darted over my nipples, along my hips, down my stomach toward my thighs. Everything felt like it was crisped and burned and yet it was the fire that did not burn, the heat that did not char. But still it scorched, like sunlight on ice, the rays giving no heat but still blinding in their brilliance.

  I opened my eyes, reaching out, searching for someone near enough to entice in, to call my own. I would bestow upon them the revelations to make them a tortured genius, a brilliant visionary, but they would never be satiated, not until they held me
in their arms, and they would love me. And I would feed until they had no more to give.

  Sitting up, I looked around. There was a woman, and part of me recognized her. Marilee. She watched me cautiously from outside the Circle. I knew I couldn’t pass the borders. I could feel the iron encircling me, and the promise of pain kept me from crossing the barrier.

  “Ember?” She was wary, I could hear it in her voice.

  “Let me out of the Circle.” I held her gaze, willing her obedience, but she kept where she was, shaking her head.

  “No. You are confined for a good reason. Do you know who I am?”

  I nodded. “Marilee. My keeper.” I laughed. “But I need no one to handle me. I need no one to guard my conscience.”

  “Do you know what’s happening?”

  Something about her question struck a chord in me, and the whisper would not be ignored. There was something we were supposed to be doing. Something we had been searching for. I didn’t want to pay attention, but in the back of my mind, I knew that I had to listen. I blinked, and for just a moment, I split in two, and found myself looking at the Leannan Sidhe, realizing that she was part of me. She looked back, eyes narrowing.

  “Give into me. Give yourself over to me, and we will be everything we were meant to be.” Her whisper was enticing, and I thought about how easy it would be to accept her, to let her take over and become the power and force she was.

  Marilee’s voice echoed through the room. “Ember, listen to me. You cannot totally resist this part of yourself, but you must find a way to keep her under control. She would destroy your friends. She would destroy Angel if you don’t learn how to harness her energy.”

  At Angel’s name, a vision arose of my friend burned out and tortured by the hunger that I could too easily visit on her.

  “Back. Your time has not come yet,” I said, turning to the Leannan Sidhe. “I will find a way to allow you into my life. But not yet, and you will not be in control.”

  “That’s it. Ember, remember, she is only part of who you are.”

  My alter-self turned, hissing viciously at Marilee. “Old hag, keep out of this. You do not make the decision.”

  “Neither do you,” Marilee said. “Ember makes the final decision, not you.”

  With a cunning gaze, the Leannan Sidhe turned to me. “Don’t deny me. Do not cast me out, for you will be a pale shadow of yourself without me. Give me control and we rule the world.”

  “Go back. Now,” I said, trying to shield myself from her lure.

  Her eyes sparkled with a sea-green fire and she started to rise up, but I forced all my will to shove her back. She let out a shriek, but then a wave crashed through the circle, and she leaped on what looked like a wild horse and rode off, into the water, laughing.

  “I’ll return soon, and you will not deny me my rightful place,” she called over her shoulder. As I watched, a wall of water crashed down and swallowed her under.

  I blinked, and in that fraction of a second, the tincture drained out of my body and I was lying in the Circle again, every muscle in my body aching. I waited for a moment, but she was gone, so I sat up, groaning. I squinted, glancing around, but everything looked normal.

  “She’s gone,” I whispered.

  “Who’s gone?” Marilee was sitting on the floor next to the Circle.

  “You know, the Leannan Sidhe. You talked to her. She talked to you.”

  Marilee shook her head. “No, Ember, whatever occurred happened inside your own thoughts.”

  I stared at her. “Are you sure? I could have sworn…” I paused, glancing around. The air within the Circle felt moist and damp, as though I had just walked out of the ocean into the salt-sea air. The enormity of what I had felt and experienced hit me. “I want out of this Circle. Let me out?” I began to shake as the tears rose in my throat.

  Marilee held up her hand. “Hold on, I’ll open the gate. Just hold on.” She swept away a patch of the iron and held her hand out to guide me out of the Circle. As I cleared the gate, my head felt like I had suddenly had a bucket of cold water poured over me.

  “Crap. What the fuck happened in there?” I stared at her, my stomach queasy.

  “You need to tell me everything. But first, let’s go out into the kitchen and get some tea and something to eat. You expended a great deal of energy, and whatever was happening in that Circle was forcing me to keep a tight hold on the power. Something was trying to break through the gates and I had a hard time controlling them.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “And that something…was me.”

  I TOLD MARILEE about everything, including what I thought the Leannan Sidhe had said to her. “This is my mother’s blood waking up, isn’t it?”

  Marilee slid a plate of crackers and cheese over to me, along with a glass of orange juice. “You need the energy. Eat up.” She waited until I was halfway through my third cracker and slice of cheese to answer. “Yes, you have just met your mother’s bloodline.”

  “But I don’t remember her ever being that way.” I frowned, picking up another cracker. I hadn’t thought I was hungry but now I was ravenous and felt like I could eat a full three-course dinner and have room for more.

  “That’s because your mother went through the Cruharach and she, too, was faced with a choice of whether to give in to the full nature of her blood or to rein it in. She obviously chose to rein in her tendencies.”

  “If that’s what I could become, I’m scared spitless.” I stared at my plate. “I don’t want to do that to people. I don’t want to feed on them.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to accept at least part of your mother’s blood. To deny your essential self will not only put limits on your abilities, but the energy can back up like a clogged sink. When the clog breaks, you don’t want to be in the way. If you can integrate the best qualities, you can use them to become a strong, vibrant, well-rounded woman. But we haven’t even touched on your father’s nature yet—you still have to face that part of yourself, and then we work on finding a way to integrate both parts into your life.”

  I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to integrate anything right now, but Morgana had sent me to Marilee for a reason, and when I faced the seriousness of the situation, I knew I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t want to end up dead or out of control. Just touching the Leannan Sidhe’s nature, feeling her become part of me, had been intoxicating.

  “All right. So what’s the next step? When do we go in search of my connection to the Autumn Stalkers?” I was sincerely hoping she wouldn’t say today, because I was exhausted and needed to process everything that had happened.

  “Not for a while. You can’t take the tincture more than once every few weeks, or it could tumble you into a realm from which you might not be able to return.”

  “Thanks for telling me now.” I gave her a long look.

  Marilee faced me squarely. “Truth? You must give up control to me, Ember. You have neither the experience nor knowledge to navigate this journey by yourself. If you try, you’ll end up dead, mad, or worse. The power radiating off of you when you walked out of that circle was incredibly strong.”

  “Great, so it’s like I’m stuck with three personalities, only we all know about each other, and we all want control.” I was joking, but she didn’t laugh.

  “No, it’s not like that. These sides of yourself are part of you even now, but they haven’t manifested fully. They’re as much Ember as you are, but you’re afraid of them so you try to push them away. I can’t wait to see the woman you become once you pass through the transformation, lose your fear, and learn how to control your nature.”

  “What do I do in the meantime? What if, now that she’s awake, my Leannan Sidhe side tries to take over?” I had visions of her creeping out of my dreams at night and taking over.

  “I’ll give you an herbal powder. It won’t hurt you, but will help you keep things under control. It will also ease you into the Cruharach and smo
oth the way for the coming changes.”

  “All right. I’ll take it. When should I return?”

  “We’ll have to meet twice a week for the next few weeks. You have a lot to catch up on. Most families would have long ago prepared their children, so we’re rushing against time.” She hesitated a moment, then took my hand.

  “I’m afraid,” I said, not wanting to voice my thoughts. “I know you say we’ll make this work, but I’m afraid.”

  “You’d be a fool not to be afraid, Ember. But I guarantee I’ll do everything possible to help you through this. You’re not the first tralaeth I’ve guided through the Cruharach, and I doubt you’ll be the last.” Her eyes twinkled. “You thought, perhaps, you were the only one?”

  I nodded. “I know that my kind—tralaeths—are rare.”

  “Yes, rare, but not entirely unheard of. I’ve met a few others along the way, and Morgana has had me help them, as well.” She motioned to the box of crackers. “Eat as many as you need. I’ll get your herbs.”

  When she returned, she handed me a couple bottles of herbal powders, complete with instructions on how to use them.

  “Don’t forget to take them on schedule. They should prevent any slipups until we can see you through to the ritual itself.” She paused. “Do you have any questions?”

  I had a million questions, but none she could effectively answer at this point.

  “No, I guess not right now. I’m not sure how long it will take us to…well, we’re going out on a search for something, but we should be back by Sunday at the latest. When should you and I meet again?” I pulled out my calendar.

  “Let’s say Wednesday nights and Saturday nights. If we need to reschedule, so be it. Around six-thirty?”