Page 56 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
I felt Alma’s smooth cold demonic flesh start to warm, felt her returning as her body began to shudder in my arms. I let her go, watching as she supported herself on her forearms, her demonic whine morphing into deep uneven breaths as bones began to crack, the smoke slipping from her flesh.
‘Here!’ William called, tossing one of the blankets over her, draping it across her as those limbs cracked and twisted back into human form.
‘Will she be all right?’ he asked quietly, crouched next to me as I tried to gather myself. Too out of breath. Unable to answer when I didn’t feel like anything would ever be all right again.
Alma let out a pained moan, a tremor moving for her as her skin returned to its familiar warm hue, those dark curls in disarray as her mortal body trembled from the exertion.
‘Alma.’ I reached for her but she flinched away, her lips moving, gaze distant. Then she clutched the blanket around herself and was on her feet. Stumbling to the table by the bookshelves where the maps always lay scattered. Emrys and Gideon averted their eyes, William went scarlet but Thean didn’t break his glaring stare at me. Shirt torn and my blood still smeared across the voyav’s perfect face like warpaint.
‘Damp stone ruins. Runes on the walls. Carved too deep. They went too deep. There was an altar, crovern weed grows there. Evergreen in the darkness.’ The words were too quick from Alma’s lips, a tremble to her limbs as she fought to stay upright, gaze crazed like a madwoman.
‘Alma.’ I took hold of her shoulders dragging the blanket up to cover her better. Yet she didn’t stop talking, didn’t stop trembling as her eyes raked over those maps, as her clawed fingers rifled through them desperately.
‘Crovern weed only grows in the south,’ William half stammered.
‘It’s following.’ She twitched, those horrid oily scales running down her arms. A crack and twist of bone before she shook it away, a hiss slipping through her lips with the pain. ‘I need her.’
She shook her head, dark hair falling around her as another tremble coursed through her and she grabbed her head as if pained.
‘Alma.’ I held her tighter. Then her head shot up, eyes wide as she met my own.
‘Kyvor Mor,’ she said. Repeating the word uncertainly.
Kyvor Mor, that voice mocked in the back of my mind. The fear driving deeper with every flinch and twitch of Alma. She broke my hold, lurching towards Emrys’s desk.
Then she flipped through those books and maps, eyes wild. Until one single long, horrid claw had buried itself into a map at the centre of his desk.
‘Near.’ The word was a demonic hiss from her lips. As if her tongue was still too long for her mouth.
I felt a presence at my back, expecting Emrys but it was Thean, watching like they’d never seen her before. The woman unashamed by the brutality of her magic as she stood in nothing but a thin blanket, meeting their stare.
A wild, uncaged thing.
I looked down at my palm, blood weeping from her demonic bite. The house could move anywhere but Montagor could find me within it. Yet they’d struggle to find where I’d bled before. Where old blood lingered.
‘We need to move the house,’ I said, trying my best to keep my voice steady. ‘Dark beasts don’t hunt the same ground twice.’
I needed to be somewhere Montagor believed I’d never go.
I moved between the shelves, heading for the Portium door. Everything that had led me away and yet I still found myself back where I never wished to be.
Someone called my name but I didn’t stop. Not until I moved that crystal and gave the door my command. Until it hummed and began to work with a spark of my magic. The wheel stopped its clattering, and the house – seeming to confuse my unsteadiness for excitement – opened the door.
The blast of cold winter air was a sharp slap across my face. Sharp enough to distract me from the fear that turned my insides out. The sharp stone ruins of Daunton protruded like charred bones from the decimated earth.
Daunton Wood.
Chapter Seventeen
Kat
It is a blessing to exist. Therefore, the very pain of this existence must be a blessing too, for the ancestors have willed it so. They have walked this world before and will walk it once more. We pray not to worship blindly, but to seek the purpose of our path. To challenge what we deem unwise. For the ancestors listen, and we too will be ancestors one day.
Ode to the Ancestors – Songs of Kysillia
The old story kept repeating itself in my mind and all I could think was that maybe it wasn’t a blessing after all. Maybe the fates of old, the creatures said to guide the ancestors’ will, were just like most creatures in this world. Cruel.
Emrys, Gideon and Thean had left to hunt down the summoning. Leaving me and William to get Alma into bed. Gideon had quickly assessed that the darkness of her transformation hadn’t caused her any damage.
