The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (30 page)

She threw an orb of wyrd around them as a stream of thumb-sized bugs rained down on them. She wove a strand of fire into the warding. When the bugs hit her orb they sparked, sizzled, and fell dead to the ground.

“The bedroom!” Clara said. “Hurry!” She pulled on Deven’s shirt and yanked Pi toward the side of the building, retracing their earlier steps to Devenstar’s bedroom window.

“Kill them with fire!” they heard the one-winged angel yell from his post before the basilica.

“Right,” Pi whispered.

Even as they ran the deceased were gaining on them, sloughing up the hill, oozing like some dead plague toward them. A corpse stumbled into their path. With a squeal Pi doused it with a bout of green flame, igniting it. The dead body tumbled back down the snowy hill, leaving charred bits of carrion in its wake.

“Don’t let them touch you,” Deven said, gazing down at the hunks of rotted meat left behind. As they passed by the remains, Pi looked down and saw milky worms slithering out of the glob of flesh, slowly creeping toward her and her companions. Gorge rose in her throat, but there was no time; another corpse was lumbering up behind Clara, its arms outstretched.

She didn’t make it in time. Pi lifted her hands, blasted out with fire, but the creature had already sunk teeth into Clara’s neck. Clara screamed out with pain, her body shaking, wracked with fiery pain.

The gout of green fire ignited the corpse seconds too late. It fell back into a bush, and the dry shrub ignited in green flame. Pi pulled Clara close, inspecting the bite mark. But the damage had already been done. A swath of milky worms were already tunneling into her flesh.

“Leave me!” Clara said, reading the look on Pi’s face.

“No!” Pi said.

“Yes! Leave me!” Clara yanked away from Pi and dashed down the hill, into a swarm of locusts. An orb of fire ignited around Clara, charring bugs and dead bodies alike. Pi screamed out her pain and tried to dash after Clara, but Deven lifted her off her feet, hoisting her through a window. She struggled to climb back out, but he blasted her back with a force of wyrd, crawling in after her.

He shuttered the window tight, sealing it with wyrd.

Outside they could hear dead hands pounding on doors and windows.

“What do we do?” Devenstar asked himself, knowing that Pi wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He suppressed the urge to give in to the fear that his sister was dead. But she was a sorceress. Only removing her head would stop her, right? He wasn’t even sure that was true any longer. How many injuries could one sustain before they died, headless or not?

“Deven?” the familiar voice of Flora came from outside the room. “Thank the Goddess you made it back inside.”

She looked beat up, harried. “I just barely got back inside myself,” she told him. She entered the room and pulled Pi into her embrace. “I saw what happened with Clara as I was breaking in. I’m sorry.”

Deven shook his head, holding up his hand. He didn’t want to hear it right now. Right now he had to focus or he’d become a shivering mass of tears like Pi was, in the grips of their teacher.

“We need to get higher. We need to fight them from where they can’t reach us. They’re dead. From what I see they can’t hurt us unless they can reach us.”

“There are the bugs,” Flora said. As if her words had reminded him, Devenstar could hear them outside, their clacking wings and incessant chattering.

“Pi created an orb around us with fire wyrd that seemed to work.” He looked down at Pi, who had dissolved into a noiseless lump on the floor.

“What are we going to do with her?” Flora said. “She isn’t well enough to come with us; we’ll be too concerned for her safety.”

Devenstar nodded. “I’m sorry, Pi,” he whispered. He laid a hand on her leg and infused her body with his wyrd, freezing her in place.
At least she can’t get herself hurt.

A great explosion came from the sky, followed by a bright flash. A large flaming mass of rock hurtled out of the heavens toward the west. The light illuminated the plight of those struggling with the armies of death in Lytoria. Another explosion came, and another burning mass. Minutes dragged by like hours as one explosion after another shook the earth and burning rock lit the sky. Fire, falling like rain, began cascading to the earth.

Figures dashed here and there, trying to save themselves from the rain of fire. Most were successful. Some weren’t as lucky, being crushed beneath stones or ignited in flame as the burning rock burrowed into their bodies.

With the coming of light, Lytoria began to hum again, but this time when the song crested to meet the fiery sky, it wasn’t with a joyful noise, but with the voice of Chaos.

When it ended, only moments after it started, Lytoria was in flames. Few buildings remained standing, and even fewer people remained to fight. But still the armies of death came.

Jovian was sitting vigil at Maeven’s side when, a day after the attack, he changed back from an eagle and into a man. Jovian was worried at first what it could mean, but when he didn’t notice any signs of the rephaim attack, his racing heart calmed. For two more hours he sat by his boyfriend’s side, willing him to wake up, and finally he did, with a giant stretch and a moan.

Jovian had been drifting in the beginning of a dream, but when he felt Maeven’s hand tighten in his, he jolted awake. With his free hand he rubbed his eyes, and cursed the headache that was beginning to throb behind his eyes from lack of sleep.

“Well, hello there,” Maeven said, and smiled sleepily at Jovian.

“Hey,” Jovian said, smiling back.

“You look like something’s wrong,” Maeven said, and chuckled.

“Nothing at all. You were only bitten and nearly killed by a rephaim, other than that everything’s fine,” Jovian said.

“That’s it?” Maeven said. But then he turned serious. “What happened?”

Jovian told him about what they’d learned in the Vault of Fates, about the attack, about Cianna being stolen away, and about the giant coming to help them.

“And they think the groo will help us? Take us to the Turquoise Tower?” Maeven sounded skeptical.

“That’s what they say. Apparently we’ll get there very fast,” Jovian said, not really believing it.

“Oh yeah, very fast,” Maeven said. “They were one of the three defenses created by Aaridnay, they are wyrded to be fast.”

Jovian thought for a moment about how fast he’d seen Joya move when she was wyrded, and shivered, trying to imagine riding on the back of an animal going that fast.

“When do we head out?” Maeven asked. He sat up in bed, stretching his arms high overhead, and rubbed a hand through his short dark hair.

“We were just waiting for you to wake up and see if you were okay,” Jovian said.

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Maeven wondered, looking at Jovian incredulously.

“You were bitten by a rephaim, Maeven, we aren’t sure what side-effects that will have,” Jovian told him honestly.

“Like, some kind of transference of power?” Maeven wondered, leaning back on his arms. When he’d shifted his clothes had fallen loose; when he turned back into a human he had fit back into them, but they were now tangled around his body, looking off-center and uncomfortable.

“Something like that,” Jovian said.

“Well, I can tell you I’m hungry right now, and it’s not for blood or death. Do we have any food?”

Jovian smiled. “Yeah, it’s almost dinner time. The giants have been taking care of our needs like that.”

“Awesome, let me wash up and we’ll head out.” Maeven looked around the room. “Um, where’s the wash basin? Are there tubs?”

“Even better,” Jovian said. He let Maeven gather his clothing and then led him down the hall and to the right to the common bathroom. Inside was a chamber, separated from the rest of the room by glass walls and even a glass door. He showed Maeven how to work the levers and switches while the other man undressed.

“And it rains on you?” Maeven asked, his face scrunching up in confusion.

“Yeah, it’s rather great,” Jovian said, stepping out of the bathing chamber and letting Maeven step in.

As Maeven lathered himself up he looked around at all the odd sights of the inside of Vorustum-Apaleer. He had many questions about why the walls looked so different than what they were used to, or why the lights were stationary, and what kind of wyrd or substance fueled them. Jovian had no answers for him other than a shrug.

“It’s the city of angels, who knows why it’s so strange,” Jovian said.

“Do you think this is what it’s like in the Ever After?” Maeven asked, turning around and rinsing his hair.

“I really haven’t thought about that,” Jovian said. He looked at the shining white walls and the lights that ran the length of the ceiling. “Possibly. I mean, this is a city for angels, so they probably constructed it after what they knew.”

“Yeah,” was all Maeven said. Stepping out of the bathing chamber, he wrapped a heavy towel around himself and strode over to Jovian. He wrapped powerful arms around the younger man, and pulled him in for a hug. “Now that I don’t stink, I can do that.”

Jovian hugged him back, thankful that there was nothing apparently wrong with Maeven.

“You had me really worried,” Maeven confessed, kissing the top of Jovian’s forehead where the scar that divided his face diagonally started.

“I had
you
worried?” Jovian asked. Maeven huffed a laugh into Jovian’s ear.

“I thought I was dead. I saw you riding toward me on the back of the Pale Horse. You reached out your hand to me, and as I reached up to take it, I was suddenly transported to some dreamland.”

“What happened there?” Jovian asked. He remembered many times being transported in a dream, and often it had prophetic outcomes.

Maeven shook his head and leaned away from Jovian. The front of Jovian’s shirt was wet. Maeven looked deep into Jovian’s emerald eyes and smiled.

“I honestly can’t remember. The last thing I remember was seeing you on the horse before I woke up holding your hand. Something must have happened, though, in the space between the horse and waking up.”

“Yeah,” Jovian said.

“But I was worried that it meant you were dead. I don’t know what I would do if you died,” Maeven said. “Promise me that you won’t die until after I die?”

Jovian scowled and shoved Maeven’s slick shoulder, feeling the bunched-up muscles underneath. “That’s a selfish request,” Jovian said. “What makes you think I could handle it any better?”

“Well, if I go first I can go make sure we have a really awesome room in the Ever After. Maybe with one of these rain baths in it.”

Jovian laughed at that and kissed Maeven lightly. “No, I don’t want to think about either of us dying,” he whispered. But he couldn’t help it. Maeven was here talking about the Pale Horse and Jovian on the back of it. Jovian had also seen the Pale Horse in his visions of the Turquoise Tower. Pair those visions with the feeling of impending doom looming up before them, and Jovian couldn’t help but think of their deaths.

“Here, you look like you could use a rain bath,” Maeven said, tugging Jovian’s shirt up over his head.

“I just had one this morning,” Jovian said, laughing at the look in Maeven’s eyes.

“Yeah, but you didn’t have one with
me
,” Maeven said, a smile ghosting across his face.