Page 41 of Jacinth

But he certainly wasn’t in a conversational mood any longer.

CHAPTER 29

Skyler

“... able to see... events...”

I let my voice trail off as Niko faded from view. I would have worried after him, except I noticed the world had shifted to shades of gray. The ground beneath my feet was black as ash, and the imprint fanned out in each direction as though I stood at the center of a blast point.

The nearest standing headstones lay a dozen paces away and were little more than piles of rubble. Farther, they had fared better, jagged pieces of stone reaching for the sky. It was cold, it was bleak, and it was utterly empty. Even without the medium abilities Niko held, I knew that not a soul existed in this space.

Carrion birds circled something to the west, and I had the passing thought the damage may not have been confined to the cemetery.

“What happened here?” I wondered aloud, turning again in hopes I might have been mistaken. Nope, everything was gone.

“You failed.”

The voice was so unexpected in this dead landscape I squeaked in an extremely un-manly way and almost tripped over my feet to confront the new threat.

She looked small.

Shrouded in her signature black dress, the cowl of her matching black shawl almost obscured her entire face, bar the tip of her pointed nose. The Crone hobbled slowly through all the destruction.

“You are distracted with this mate business and time is running out. Was I not clear enough when I sought you out days ago, boy? You have a job to do.”

“I haven’t exactly been slacking.” I was tired and frustrated, and feeling underappreciated and set up, if I were being completely honest.

“You give me these trivial peeks at what was and what will be and tell me nothing! How can I win a game with no rules? No guidelines for fair play. What do you want from me?”

Okay, she no longer looked as small as she reached up and removed her cowl. She seemed to grow and expand, taking up a great deal more space than a moment ago. Her ice white eyes were sharp as daggers where they bore into my soul, as she hissed through a veil of unkempt black and gray hair.

“You have been all but spoon-fed, you foolish child. Prevent this catastrophe. That is your purpose.”

In the next blink, I was alone. I sank to the ground and ran my fingers through the cold ashes. As I thought, I drew idle patterns. Mindlessly, the images came until I had begun a counterclockwise spiral.

Then a curious thing happened.

The carrion birds reversed their course. As I watched, they appeared to dive bomb the grass… backward.

I felt the earth beneath my hands warm.

I turned to see Father Dare… but not.

He was monstrous in his appearance, shrouded in smoke and retreating one step at a time toward where I sat. I marveled as I watched this event in reverse, like the rewinding of an old VHS tape.

He backtracked until he was standing in front of me, inches from where my hand traced a slow spiral. His arms rose and a shock wave that began at the horizon rolled inward across the landscape, returning to the point of origin. Dare’s amulet.

The similarity between it and the one Orion wore near-on religiously was startling, only this felt darker. More sinister.

I continued to watch events in reverse, speeding things up and witnessing, from this new angle, how he had been taking the spirits one by one. The vision was horrific and before I came to where Jacinth was almost discovered, on the day we had met, I was a wreck with worry.

We had come so close to losing her. If we failed… we would.

I released my grip on time and let it play out.

When I was back to being alone in a barren landscape which would better suit as the setting for a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I told myself to wake up.

And to my everlasting shock, I did.

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