Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales) (56 page)

Canyon and sky turned bright red, as if the world were dissolving into blood.

The sun rose, boiling.

The first ray struck the heart of the Felixatus. The globe lit up, dazzling. The earth began to tremble. On the far side of the canyon, rocks cracked and fell.

“Now!” commanded Aurata.

Stevie spun the globe. An answering beam shot out of the lens, yellow-hot and laser-straight, striking the center of Aurata’s vortex … accurate, except that she’d calibrated the markings on the meridian hoop a hairsbreadth off. Only starfire flew out. Not the souls themselves.

She hoped.

Would this tiny sabotage even make a difference? Her thoughts raced as if each second lasted a minute.
If I do this—my only chance to help Rosie, Sam and Luc—Aurata will destroy Mist. If she doesn’t get him, the eruption will. So can I sacrifice him to save them? I have to. Mist, forgive me. You wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t. No choice.

The landscape was quaking, the earth beginning to erupt along the canyon floor. Qesoth’s brilliance spilled through. Aurata was transforming into her fire shape, taller than before, pure golden brilliance like the sun’s corona.

Her followers were crying out—more in shrieking fear than in wonder. As the rocks trembled, two of them slipped off the rim and went plunging down. Aurata took no notice.

“Great Qesoth, fire of creation, manifest in me…” She flung her arms at the sky. “
I am Qesoth.
”

And because she was Aetherial, and believed it, her words became the truth.

*   *   *

Mist wasn’t sure how to begin. Albin was right: There came a point when Aetherial powers faded and the flesh took over, leaving Aelyr as limited as humans. He sat cross-legged facing Rufus, recalling how he’d felt in Virginia’s waterfall when he and Stevie had transformed. An alchemical mix of terror and exhilaration …

He was not comfortable, holding his brother’s gaze as he recalled vile memories of Rufus’s eyes glinting with cruelty and mischief. Mist forced himself to put all that aside, and stared into his brother’s soul without flinching. No anger, no judgment. They joined hands. After a time, discomfort fell away.

They met as equals.

Old skills could be recaptured, however rusty. The air shuddered around them as they wove their own web to push back Slahvin’s. Deep inside, Mist felt his lost
fylgia
, his connection to the Otherworld, awakening.

His physical form was expanding, unfolding into something draconic, a great salamander sporting claws and fins. Rufus was changing with him, an expression of glee spreading over his face. Touching, they melded and became a twin creature.

Human doubts fell away. There was only Aetheric force and purpose.

Their prison gave way. Walls melted, swirling into coils, vanishing altogether. Slahvin and his gang of seven were revealed, surrounding them with their eyes closed, all their concentration focused on keeping their prisoners caged.

Eight pairs of eyes snapped open as the web collapsed.

In their dark suits they were like common human guards, no less menacing for that. Handguns swept from holsters. Mist and Rufus were outnumbered. Bullets might not touch their eternal essence, but could still rip apart their flesh, inflict hideous damage to their bodies, even death.

To Mist’s surprise, they were in the main living room. Through the panoramic window, he saw a ruby dawn, and strange lights dancing on the canyon’s edge.

Mistangamesh gazed at each of their captors in turn, rage smoldering low inside him. Their casual strength, their sense of entitlement infuriated him. Slahvin was the worst, a slithery psychopath too far beyond human to be reached.

“Don’t move,” Slahvin barked.

He’d been a servant to House Ephenaestus, and still served Veropardus and Aurata to this day. However, his sinister, alien aura suggested he was not Felynx at all but something older and darker. Mist could only guess what he really was, or what resentments had poisoned him over the years. Jealousy of Mist, hatred of Rufus? Like a
dysir
, Slahvin’s only purpose now was to protect Aurata.

“A dog can only serve one master,” said Mist.

This remark appeared to infuriate Slahvin. In a blink, he changed to a serpentine shape of darkest crimson, nearly black, his eyes burning blood-red.

Mist and Rufus, meanwhile, had slipped back nearly to human shape. Regathering their strength they surged again, extruding claws and barbed fins. Uproar broke out among the guards. They were slow to use their guns, as if wary of harming Aurata’s brothers. Instead, heat buffeted the air: the energy of Naamon, rising. But the brothers were also creatures of fire and fed upon it. By reflex they flung up shields to deflect the attack. And the shields became wings, each feather a steel-sharp blade.

Slahvin raised a handgun and fired.

Mist-Rufus dodged the bullet, laughing. They divided in two, Rufus capering to draw their attention as Mist spun around behind Slahvin.

Dragon jerked serpent into the air. Rufus lunged, stabbing Slahvin through the gut with a pinion-feather as sharp as a sword. Mist sliced his throat for good measure. He’d thought it would be harder, but Slahvin went down like a sack of rocks and Mist knew he was dead when he saw Slahvin’s soul-essence fleeing—a dark transparent snake flying out of him, vanishing into some deeper dimension.

Dying, or reverting to a more primal form.

With their leader gone, the other guards seemed to be at a loss. The brothers broke through their ranks and left them reeling. As one, Mist and Rufus ran and leapt at the huge plate-glass window, spiking it with sharp beaks that caused the whole pane to implode. Over the balcony rail they leapt, glass showering around them, bullets flying past.

Changing again, they landed as lightly as a pair of panthers and ran on all fours towards the bloody fire of sunrise.

*   *   *

Ruby light flooded the desert. The far walls of the canyon glowed and the strangely contorted promontories resembled weird sculptures, striped red and orange and golden-yellow, as if the whole landscape was on fire, flowing with liquid flame.

Stevie looked down in complete terror. The canyon floor appeared to be miles below. Her heartbeat was a single juddering rush and there was no shred of strength in her body. Where was her Aetherial core, her
fylgia
, her hidden powers? She felt entirely human, helpless, petrified.

She stared at the laser beam from the Felixatus piercing the whorl that Aurata had conjured. It was beginning to burn a portal, she saw, like the sun burning paper through a magnifying glass.

The rock platform shook alarmingly. “Hold steady,” came a voice from the goddess beside her, a towering, coruscating figure of fire. Qesoth spoke, from far above, with Aurata’s voice. “Let Naamon come to us!”

Yards behind them, where Veropardus stood guarding the path, Stevie heard shouts of anger. Her fleeting impression was that Aurata’s web-weavers had fled, but Veropardus wouldn’t let them past. The sounds were faint beneath the roar of blood in her ears. She didn’t look back.

A strange ecstasy filled her, as if she were about to fly right out of her body.

The Earth opened its mouth and grinned.

In the maw, a crescent of white-yellow boiling rock, she saw a black spot. The ground shook and rumbled with the terrible deep tearing noise of lava. The base of the canyon split wide open and the air itself pulled apart, creating a vacuum. Sulfurous fumes rushed up to fill the space as oxygen was sucked out.

“I can’t breathe,” Stevie said, trying to take an Aetherial form that didn’t need breath. Her leaden body was not listening. Flames and magma spread, and at the center of her vision—she couldn’t tell if it was down in the lava or floating in midair—the black spot went on spinning and growing …

All this happened in a bare three seconds. Stevie knew what to do; it was what she’d always planned, and she was already in motion as the world turned inside out around her. She reached for the Felixatus, wrapped both arms around it and clutched the globe close against her chest.

The beam cut out.

“What are you doing?” roared Qesoth-Aurata.

The only thing I can, aborting the process before it runs beyond control.

She stepped off the edge—only to stick like a fly in treacle. The force of the tenfold web was still holding her, strong enough to resist gravity. She felt Qesoth reaching out to seize her, heat scorching her back.

Then Stevie reached deep into her Aetherial self and pulled out the shreds of her power, just enough to stretch the web. She saw her
fylgia
—real or a vision, it didn’t matter—leap out and down towards the spinning black spot—creating a silver wire down which she might slide.

Clasping the Felixatus, she launched herself into nothingness. The bonds of the web fractured. The canyon swung beneath her. Choked by the horrible thrill of falling, she heard a voice yelling her name far above, fading as she arrowed towards a black dot in a lake of fire.

*   *   *

As they reached the place where the canyon edge extended an arm towards the lookout point, Mist saw a blur of orange-yellow fire at the far end. The tenfold web distorted reality, so he could see no individuals, only a mad dance of light. A group of eleven Aetherials, led by Veropardus, intercepted him and Rufus. Veropardus squared up to Mist with an expression of pure, gloating hatred.

“Where do you think you are going?”

“To the ritual,” Mist said very softly. He wasn’t sure how he looked now: part animal, part Aetherial, half in and half out of the Dusklands; a mess.

“You are not invited.”

“Nor are you, by the look of things. What went wrong?”

Veropardus’s gaunt face turned sour. He went nearly purple with loathing. He raised a hand and commanded his cohorts, “Take them.”

At that instant, shots rang out from the house balcony and two of Vero’s men fell.

“Oh shit,” said Rufus, and laughed.

“Stop firing!” Veropardus shrieked at Slahvin’s guards, but the rest of his companions were diving for cover, vanishing behind rocks below the rim of the ravine.

The bullets ceased. Only three Felynx remained in the scarlet-washed landscape. Mist, and Rufus, and Veropardus.

All Mist saw was the creature who had murdered Fela. That could never be forgotten.

He shot a glance at Rufus, who looked back and nodded.

Veropardus came raging at them in a huge tiger-like shape. Fluidly they slid away from his claws. Rufus slashed him across the abdomen. Mist impaled him with a wing barb as long as a spear and katana-sharp, piercing up into his heart. Flinging him down onto the rock, Mist slit his throat. “For Fela,” he murmured as he made the cut, severing the head for good measure. It was damage enough to force the soul-essence from him. Finally, Mist hefted the head and body over the canyon edge to bounce down the near-vertical walls …

Towards a river of lava.

“Steady on,” said Rufus. “Don’t you know that Oliver got burned at the stake in one of his previous lives? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Mist stood panting for breath, sick at heart. “For today, perhaps.”

“The brothers Ephenaestus are back,” said Rufus, pumping a fist in the air.

Some of Aurata’s followers raised their heads from their hiding places, but none tried to stop Mist and Rufus as they set out along the rugged, narrow spine toward the lookout rock. Violent tremors threatened to throw them over the side. In front, a section of the arch collapsed, leaving a great gap between them and the platform where fiery figures were crying out in awe and fear. He saw the tall burning-angel shape of Aurata, Stevie tiny beside her.

Dropping to all fours, Mist ran and leapt the gap. He nearly lost his footing, but clawed his way onto the last stretch of the path and the plate of rock. Rufus was just behind him. Landscape and sky were drenched in red. Below, Jigsaw Canyon seethed with lava.

Too late. Mist felt the tenfold pressure and saw the whorl of distorted reality that his sister had created. He saw the ominous black hole spinning at the center.

He saw Stevie grab the Felixatus and leap—

“No!”

He left Rufus standing, rushed past the raging column of fire that was Aurata and threw himself after Stevie. Heat blasted into his face. The rock platform broke under his feet as the canyon itself begin to crumble, shards falling with him into the void.

21

Aurata

Stevie was looking up at green light dappling a ceiling of black rock …

No. No. Not again!

The silhouette of Persephone stood over her, unspeaking. With a huge effort Stevie pointed upward, struggling with her whole being to convey her urgent need to stay in the upper world.
There is more at stake than losing my life. Take me afterwards, I don’t care—but not now. Still so much to do!

Persephone raised a hand. She was an immense black archangel, her raised palm a command to go back. Stevie recalled her words,
No one comes here except of their own free will.

The next moment, Stevie hit a hard surface, rolling. Her body thrummed with the impact. Bruising pain in every bone drove out her breath. Sharp objects stabbed into her ribs. For long seconds, she couldn’t move. All around her was pale nothingness: a thick, swirling white fog.

She was lying across the Felixatus, hugging it. The hard edges of the metal framework and the base dug into her, but the important thing was that she’d kept hold and protected it. And the inner sphere was still alive. The unreleased energy of a million Felynx vibrated, sending darts of static into her.

The surface on which she’d landed was cold quartz: sloping, lumpy and rough-textured. She could barely see her own hands in the fog veil.

Terror lay on her like a solid weight. Had she gone nearly blind, or landed in some Aetheric limbo? Trapped in a dimension with no escape? Fine, only if she knew that her sabotage had worked.

The cloud around her was so dense that it hurt her lungs to breathe. Half-stunned, she pushed herself up onto one hand. There was nothing to see in any direction—until she looked upwards and saw a small darkish patch with ragged edges, like an eclipsed sun.