Calling the Wild Page 27

  There she found a spell of punishment, used to temporarily restrict the powers of those who were deemed unworthy. She cast the spell, without benefit of a circle or any protection. The day became night and then day again as she chanted, forcing that which she’d awoken deep into her body, curling it in a ball down at the base of her spine, hidden away between sheets of bone.

  The earth had trembled when the spell finished, and Moira swore she saw the sun shudder in its mooring in the sky, but when she approached a snake it did not die, and she’d had to scramble away to keep from getting bitten.

  Since that day she’d kept whatever dark thing she’d awakened locked deep inside. The spell was as much a part of her as her hands and feet, a constant presence that went unnoticed.

  Now she called on that spell, using the same magic to quiet the voices. She staggered as the dizziness tried to overwhelm her, but righted herself as the last voice receded.

  “Moira, wait.”

  Kiron ducked under the door and came into the burial chamber after her.

  Moira ignored him and went to the sarcophagus. The replica of the inner sarcophagus lay in an open topped stone box, tall enough that it came to the bottom of Moira’s ribs. The amulet was inside the closed sarcophagus. Planting her hands on the rim of the stone box she prepared to lever herself in.

  “I said wait.” Kiron grabbed her and forced her to face him. “Why did you run from me?”

  “I am not that thing.” She pointed at a small statue of Sekhmet that stood on a low table against one of the burial chamber walls.

  “Moira, you cannot just dismiss what you are—”

  “You don’t know anything about it. I have felt that power, and it is nothing but pain and death and suffering.”

  Her voice cracked and his arms came around her, but Moira didn’t want to be comforted. Kiron hands hung for a moment, bereft of a body to hold, and then dropped to his sides.

  “How long have you known what you are?”

  “Danny called me that, that name. It was the first time I’d heard it.”

  “Sekhmet?”

  She shivered in dark pleasure as the name left his lips. No. “Don’t say that word.”

  “How is it you can have only now discovered who you are, and yet have experienced the power?”

  He was trying to be reasonable and rational, but all it did was make her angry. “I didn’t know what it meant when I first called that power. All I knew is that it was evil. I killed things Kiron, I killed people.”

  “Power that you don’t yet understand—”

  “No, the power is evil. I locked it away inside, and now I am going to find a way to get rid of it, make sure I can never use it, and my enemies can’t either.”

  “This is why they want you.”

  The light of revelation shone in Kiron’s face, followed by relief at finally having a reason, an answer to the question “why”.

  “You think one of the Dark Prophecies will contain a spell to help you rid yourself of this power.”

  Maybe he hadn’t quite figured it all out. Moira was glad. “Help me or don’t, but I am tired of fighting you and everyone else.” Moira planted her hands on the lip of the stone sarcophagus and swung a leg over, the concrete they’d used to make it scraping the bare skin of her legs.

  Kiron’s wrapped his hands around her waist, lifted her off, and set her down with a thunk, irritation evident in every line of his body as he bent over and easily shoved the lid of the inner sarcophagus to the side. There should have been a second pure gold one inside that, but instead there was unfinished plaster and metal, the exposed bone of the replica, rather than the bones of the king.

  He shoved it as far to the side as he could, then grabbed the edge, lifting the top and wedging it between two sarcophagi. Lying casually in the bottom was a small tiara.

  “I thought it was supposed to be an amulet?”

  “Look, there is a chain.”

  Moira leaned over the edge of the box, looking for what he’d pointed out. A blast of heat hit her face and she leaned back. “Whoa. That’s hot.”

  Kiron held his hand out over the amulet and snatched it back, shaking it out. “We can’t pick it up.”

  “I think I can.”

  “We can’t risk it, the heat may be more than temperature, it may be the heat of powerful magic.”

  “Help me in.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes, and I’m telling you, I think I can pick it up.”

  Kiron lifted her into the stone sarcophagus and she balanced her feet on the edges of the inner one. Making sure her purse was firmly across her body and wouldn’t fall off Moira leaned into Kiron’s hands, which steadied her at the hips, and bent towards the amulet.

  “This is a climatic moment.” She gasped, face flaming from the reflect heat, fingers tingling as she reached for the chain. “You’re better be paying attention to something other than the fact that I’m flashing you.”

  Kiron nipped one of her exposed ass cheeks. “Would I do a thing like that?”

  “Hold on to me, I’m going to grab it.”

  The heat should have been unbearable, but although it was hot, Moira found it no more painful than standing in front of an open oven.

  The chain was curled just to the side of the small tiara. The tiara’s black metal and crystal winking, even in the shadows cast by Moira’s body as she bent forward, as if there were lit from within. As her hand approached, the tiara started to vibrate, the crystals pulsing with light. Like the crystals in the cave.

  When she grabbed the chain everything would change. In the last moment before she seized her fate, Moira sent a prayer skyward.

  God and Goddess protect me, and if my quest has brought me to danger I cannot escape, protect the centaur Kiron, for his life is precious, his heart is pure and I love him.

  Moira pinched the chain between forefinger and thumb, and lifted it.

  The room, maybe the whole Earth, shook. Kiron lifted her out, wrapping his arms around her, the amulet, clenched in her fist, pressed tight between them. The electricity flared and died, the room thrown into darkness. The black was oppressive, and suddenly it felt like a very real tomb. Kiron tapped her cheek, and Moira turned to see a pulse in the darkness. It shouldn’t have been visible, for it was darkness pulsing in darkness, with no illumination, but Moira could see it, could sense it. Concentric rings of darkness, denser than the lack-of-light darkness around them, ebbed and flowed around them.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” For the first time Moira heard fear in his voice.

  Kiron’s fear terrified her more than anything else. She clenched her hand tighter around the amulet, and one of the crystals pieced her palm. As her blood seeped over, and then into, the stones, the dark circles exploded, swelling around them, the darkness moved over and through them, consuming their minds, until there was nothing but the dark, and then even that was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Fuck. We’re dead.”

  “We are not dead,” Kiron said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re in a library. When you die, your first stop isn’t a library.”

  Moira raised her head from Kiron’s chest and peeked around. They were, in fact, in a library. Floor to ceiling bookcases, antique rugs and long wood library tables were not exactly her idea of the first stop in the afterlife, but after that weird magic implosion they’d just experienced, it was hard to believe they were alive.

  Moira backed away from Kiron, but not much. Reaching into the bra cup of her dress she pulled out the emerald and slipped it on.

  “Have you ever been to this place before?” he asked.

  “Nope. You?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s a library, and you know what they keep in libraries? Books.”

  “You think the Dark Prophecies are here?”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “
It means that the amulet transported us from Las Vegas to an unknown location.”

  “I’ve never heard of a spell that could do that.”

  “They are powerful spells, not ones made or used lightly.”

  She looked around, this time picking out details. The large square room was windowless, directed lighting on the tops of the bookcases and lamps on the tables illuminated the floor and lower walls, but left the ceiling in darkness. The floor under them was tile, cold against Moira’s bare feet, and worked in a mosaic. Moira was standing with one foot on a deep brown tile, the pervasiveness of that color suggesting it was the background tile, the other on a deep red tile.

  Moira lifted her foot off the red tile, then stepped back until she was firmly on the brown. There was a small table and chair, complete with a green-glass shaded brass office lamp a few feet off to their left.

  Moira pulled the chair out, lifting and then setting it down so the legs wouldn’t scrape across the floor and make noise. Using it as a stepping stool, she climbed onto the table, turning so she could see the floor.

  “What is it?” Kiron had changed into his centaur form. He came up next to the table, and was almost as tall as she was standing on the table.

  “Look at the floor.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The red tiles, they form a huge circle.”

  “A casting circle perhaps? Permanently set into the floor.”

  “Maybe, but there are other lines inside the circle.”

  “A pentagram?”

  It was hard to tell, since long sections of the floor were covered by rugs and tables.

  “I don’t think so. It looks like the lines come out from the center, like spokes.”

  “Where is the center?”

  “Can’t see it, it’s under that rug.”

  “Which one?”

  “The blue one. Be careful,” she added, as Kiron crossed the circle and started shoving furniture to the side of the room. The whole process was strangely quiet, since most of the pieces sat on rugs, allowing them to be pushed across the floor quickly and quietly.

  Moira wondered if it hadn’t been deliberately setup that way.

  Bit by bit Kiron’s efforts uncovered the pattern on the floor. The outer circle was red tile, the spokes made of rich stone, much more valuable than the red tile. One spoke, made out of Baltic brown granite, looked like leopard skin with its brown spots on black, another was pale, coarse travertine. The circle was nearly cleared when Moira saw it.

  “Kiron!”

  He carefully set down the massive table he was carrying and wiped his sweaty forehead with his forearm. “What?”

  “The spokes. There are nine of them, just like the nine prophecies.”

  Kiron moved back to her side and looked at what he’d uncovered. Each spoke on the floor was made of a different type of stone. The tips of the spokes disappeared into a single large round tile of the brown background color.

  “How do you know which one matches the amulet?”

  Moira looked down at the amulet, its black metal and crystal offering no clues. Two of the crystals were now a dark pink instead of clear. Moira rubbed at them, but her blood had seeped in, staining them from the inside. She passed the amulet the Kiron, hoping he could see something in it she hadn’t.

  Looking at the spokes again, Moira thought about the Dark Prophecies.

  The Hidden Mountain, The Maniac King, The Golden Death, The Dark Emperor, The Mourning Star, The Dark Queen, The Red Sea, The Sorrowful Lady, The Lost Isle.

  Was that long spoke of Kashmir gold granite The Golden Death? The soft white limestone The Sorrowful Lady?

  “There is nothing distinctive about this piece except for these two crystals which are pink instead of white.”

  “I just did that.”

  “What? How?”

  Moira showed him her palm, the small puncture that had allowed her blood to seep out and stain the crystal.

  “Your blood stains stone?”

  “It hasn’t before. At least, not that I’ve noticed. Don’t raise your eyebrow at me.”

  Not wanting to face Kiron’s expression any longer, Moira turned her attention to the wheel inlaid in the floor.

  This time she spotted it right away, and wondered why it had taken her so long.

  “I know which one it is.”

  Moira leapt off the table, sending shocks through her bare feet, the vibration singing up her shins. She raced across the floor, moving too fast to notice the way the outer circle of red flared as she passed over it. Kiron was right behind her.

  She stopped by a grey spoke. It was blue pearl granite, the base color black, but so filled with large chunks of white and pale blue minerals that it appeared grey. Moira knelt beside it, placing one hand down on the stone, near the center of the long length of rock, and pushed her magic into it. The stone glowed, the embedded minerals flaring with light, just like the walls of the cave.

  “Look.” Kiron was standing beside her, looking up and down the length of the stone. He was pointing at a little hole in the light, a result of a place where the stone hadn’t come to life.

  “I’m going to let go.”

  “Hold on, I’ll mark it.”

  Kiron planted one hoof near the dark place. Moira picked up her hand and the granite went dark. Popping to her feet, she moved to Kiron and then knelt once again, her bare, chilled legs settling on the floor.

  She ran her fingers over the stone, and found what had created the aberration. There was a small, depressed circle in the stone, so faint that it couldn’t be felt by someone walking over it.

  Moira held out her hand, palm up, and Kiron dropped the amulet into it. With frightening surety she knew that if she put the amulet into the depression, she would release the prophecy.

  “This is it.” Moira looked up at Kiron. Now that the end was here, she was scared.

  “Your quest is at an end.”

  “If the prophecy tells me what I hope it does, then yes, it is at an end.” Moira lowered her head, neck aching from looking up at him.

  “Moira,” he whispered, voice gentle and soft in the hushed silence of the library. “No matter what happens when you put that amulet in place, I will still be here.”

  Throat tight, she nodded, and then scooted over until her side rested against his foreleg. His body was warm, coat soft when she ran her hands down the muscle, bone and tendon of his leg.

  Keeping one arm around Kiron’s leg, Moira leaned forward and set the amulet into place in the small groove.

  Even before she fully released the amulet, the stone glowed, flaring with light as it had when she pushed power into it, but with ten times the strength. The minerals threw streaks of pulsing white and pale blue light against the walls and ceiling, the base black stone glowing with dark light. Moira scrambled to her feet, lacing her fingers with Kiron’s.

  The blank tile in the center of the circle shuddered, popping out of its place in the mosaic and spinning, like a coin rotating on a tabletop. The clattering of tile against tile was terrifying and loud in the previously quiet room.

  The tile slammed back into place, flat in the floor once more. Moira had just opened her mouth to make a comment, when the center of the circled exploded, the round red tile shooting straight up to the ceiling, leaving a four foot hole in the center of the floor.

  Arms emerged out of this hole. Human arms. Pallid, dead fingers scrambled for purchase against the floor, digging broken nails into the seams between the stones and pulled themselves up and out.

  Moira didn’t realize she was whimpering until Kiron pressed his hand over her mouth, silencing the noise that might attract attention to them. They were standing too close to the circle, and when one damp grey hand brushed her bare foot she screamed into Kiron’s hand. He swung her up into his arms, but didn’t move.

  She looked at him, pleaded with eyes glossy with horror and shock for him to move, get them away, but he shook his head no. His own face was
slightly ashen, as pale as his golden dark Mediterranean complexion could go. Moira turned to look at the hole, at the arms.

  Any moment the arms would lift the thing, things, they were attached to out of the hole, and Moira would see them. It was terror that kept her looking. She’d never been the child who didn’t look under the bed, she always looked, wanting to know what the monster was, wanting to see it, her imagination more than willing to supply images if she didn’t check for herself.

  There were more than a dozen arms withering and straining, as each found purchase on the floor they went still, until they were able to lift, as one.

  What emerged were nine headless creatures, modeled after humans, but sexless. Their bodies moved oddly, as if their bones had extra joints. As one they climbed out, each standing at the head of one of the spokes. Together they bent forward, planting their hands on the stone so that their bodies formed a flat-backed arch.

  Kiron finally backed up, moving out of the way of the creature that bent forward on their stone. Silence descended, and Kiron lowered Moira to the ground. The both waited, tense and silent, Kiron’s hands clenching and unclenching as fists, as they watched the hole in the floor, waiting for something else to emerge.

  The tile center descended from the roof, levitating down with calm precision. It settled into pace, sealing the hole in the floor, leaving the headless mutants outside.

  “What are they?” she finally whispered, voice rough from holding in her screams.

  “I do not know.” Kiron’s voice was grim and low. “They are not alive. They do not breathe.”

  Moira looked at the creatures one by one. He was right, they didn’t move, didn’t breathe or twitch. They were still in a way no living thing could ever be.

  “I don’t understand. Where’s the book? Where’s the prophecy?”

  “There must be something else you need to do?”

  “But what?”

  “A final incantation, perhaps a gift of blood. Do you feel anything, as you did with the amulet?”

  “What I feel is freaked out.”

  “Calm down and listen.”

  “I can’t calm down. Those things are freaking me out.”