Luna Page 18

  CHAPTER 26

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  To my right, a thick line of purple-trunked trees, covered in leaves so big and soft they looked like small cushions, rose five-hundred feet above my head. To my left, a deep crater the size of a football stadium gaped open, gray sand rolling at a snail’s pace down the slopes. In front of me, a vast flower garden stretched beyond my vision, in a cornucopia of dark colors and sweet fragrances, divided in the middle by a melodious stream.

  Winter and I had squeezed ourselves through a transparent fae wall, put in place many centuries ago in order to separate the enchanted valley from the basic world, so it could serve as temporary shelter for magic beings who tired of the Deep Down and needed a place to rest and contemplate.

  Immortals sealed the entrance to Serenity Valley when disputes erupted amongst guests of different factions and clans, which led to conflicts, even skirmishes that reverberated all the way to the ears of the Eternals.

  Not a soul had visited this ethereal paradise in over three hundred years, but here I was, the first of my line to experience the unmatched beauty and splendor of a fairy-tale land created in a time before recorded history.

  The metamorphic Moon had crested in this very spot several times over the centuries. It would do so again tonight, at midnight.

  Big snowflakes swirled and danced in the silver moonlight that shone so bright the evening could be mistaken for an overcast day in a forest.

  I took an uncertain step, holding out my hand to catch snowflakes. They did not melt in my palm. They resisted my warmth and, instead, grew a little bigger. These weren’t snowflakes at all. My mouth opened and I laughed joyfully. The round, white, furry flakes flocking to my palm were ice flies. The tiny mythical creatures had very limited consciousness, but they were drawn to agents of good and had an uncanny ability to spot malevolent intentions.

  A flurry of the white bodies landed on me, clinging onto my skin and hair like I was an ice fly magnet. I felt the soft energy emanating from the tiny creatures and a soft melody reached my ears.

  I looked to Winter, bewildered. His eyes were warm on a strangely pacified face. He reached out to gently brush ice flies off my eyelids.

  “They know you,” he said, fascinated.

  Strange, since I didn’t know myself all that well.

  The fae wall burst open, sending a rainbow of shimmering colors to light up the evening sky. A group of sixty Immortals in light armor stepped inside the enchanted valley. Their marching was almost soundless—the only thing I heard was the settling of their swords against their armor when they came to a halt in front of the crater.

  I watched in awe as they leapt down the crater, one by one. I marveled at the sleek elegance of their precise moves, the absolute focus on their faces.

  The Immortal Argos broke from the group to address me. A red dagger shone in his right hand. Looking closer, I saw that the red was his own blood gathered from his slashed left palm.

  “Your oath binds you to the Court, lunar witch,” he said, pinning me down with two unfeeling eyes.

  He set my left hand in his, slowly, ceremoniously.

  I winced when the blade carved my skin and dug deeper into my palm. Blood spurted. Argos quickly covered it with his own wounded hand, our bloods re-bonding inside the oath. He bowed to me before vanishing behind the giant purple trees.

  The magic gathered in me until I felt sick in my stomach, spinning into a tsunami of energy that I would struggle to control.

  Winter’s eyes went steely. “Your hand,” he said.

  I glanced down. My hand had already healed. Not good. A witch could not heal so fast. All this energy from the swelling Moon and the enchanted valley had accelerated my cell regeneration.

  Argos could not know. I panicked.

  Winter grabbed my hand. I caught sight of the switchblade a second before it touched my skin, reopening the wound.

  I clenched my teeth. “It will heal again,” I said. “The magic overflow is impossible for me to contain.”

  “The blade’s been soaked in charmed danshen and feverfew,” he said. “It will delay the blood from clotting.”

  Argos returned with a woman at his side. She looked very young, younger than me, but with Immortals appearances were always deceiving.

  She had toned arms and legs and wore the armor of the warriors and a silver helmet. A sword was sheathed behind her back. She bowed to me. “I am Kirsi,” she said. “I am here to assist and protect you.”

  A Valkyrie. A warrior goddess who shepherds souls through battle or into the afterlife. Or, at least, a very old Immortal posing as one.

  The Moon reached its zenith. All eyes rose to the shimmering pale disc as it became encircled by an orange halo.

  We moved closer to the crater, away from the enchanted trees. The final battle was about to begin, a confrontation that would decide the fates for an entire generation of magic beings.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  Argos, Winter and Kirsi positioned themselves a few feet apart forming a triangle of which I was in the center, facing Kirsi. All at once, they planted their swords in the ground. Kirsi closed her eyes at the Moon, then opened them at me. I nodded. My three protectors were about to make me invisible.

  They began chanting in a feverish way, their words blending together in an incomprehensible song. I was not familiar with the spell, nor its origin. It didn’t sound like anything I had been taught.

  A dome of thin mist began to form around me. At first, it flickered weakly, its vivacity ebbing and flowing, but gradually it stabilized, like a halo of finely threaded silk.

  Kirsi cleared a part of the halo and stepped inside it. The halo closed again behind her.

  “You will stay here,” Winter said. “Kirsi will stand by your side. She won’t allow anything to get to you. We will all sense it if the dome is breached.”

  With that, he and Argos leapt into the crater.

  Stay safe, Jonas. Please.

  The invisibility halo sizzled when I attempted to touch it. The spell didn’t quite turn you invisible, more like it made you very hard to spot by those outside the dome—people’s attention glided over you, the dome deflecting their eyes from seeing within.

  I sat down to turn my focus within, relaxed by Kirsi’s watchful gaze.

  Six minutes to midnight, a subterranean thunder shook the ground. My eyes flew open. The time was at hand.

  The enchanted, giant trees trembled, their tops swaying as if giant hands knocked them to-and-fro. A few trunks snapped and crashed to the ground with a dreadful, dull thud.

  The morphs burst forth like a sea of huge, brain sick monsters. They growled and howled at the top of their lungs, baring their teeth at the Moon.

  They shrouded the land like giant locusts. If I failed, if they shifted into dragons or dinosaurs or flying yetis or whatever malformed fiends they had in mind, they’d be impossible to stop.

  As one entity, they started to rip their clothes off their bodies, a raging madness taking over their bloodthirsty faces.

  I glanced at Kirsi, my heart pounding. Her face had gone stone cold. With one knee on the ground, she unsheathed her sword, preparing to pounce.

  The rabid horde stampeded, maddened with anticipation. Most of the morphs in the field were male, but there were females among them, as deranged and hyper charged as the males.

  One of the morphs wailed loudly. Fangs and claws sprouted as he fell on all four, exploding into a hyena form, impatience getting the better of him. The morphs closest to him stopped, perplexed, before they came down on the hyena, wildly punching and kicking.

  They might have killed him in their rage. I couldn’t really tell as more morphs stepped in front of the first line, hiding the hyena.

  I took in the whole grotesque melee, but something didn’t feel right. The morphs were on their own, exposed, unarmed, unbridled completely. Where were the renegade Immortals? Shouldn’t they be commanding the morphs while the
ecstatic beasts’ mental capacities diminished?

  As soon as I thought that, the morphs stopped, becoming very still. A bolt of lightning cut across the sky, setting the orange halo around the Moon ablaze. The beasts erupted into some sort of demonic dance, howling as one.

  The Moon dimmed, its silver essence collecting into a frantic swirl that compressed its surface glow. The Moon now appeared a sparkling diamond.

  The witching hour was upon us.

  My turn.

  Lunar energy coursed my veins with a lulling hum. I dropped all my defenses, abandoned every shred of control over craft and my body, every bit of training, every fevered impulse—gone in a split second. I surrendered to Selene’s dominion. I was intoxicated by her raw, uncontained power.

  The metamorphosis triggered. Fur, claws, beaks, crests and fangs rolled along backs, arms and distorted faces like a wave over a stadium crowd.

  My muscles slackened. My eyelids dropped. I had to create a profound connection between my nervous system and the metamorphic Moon.

  The uniting path stretched wide between us. I felt dazed, shocked, as the lunar energy raged through me. I vibrated from head to toe. My fingers tingled and sparked, overwhelmed conduits for the metamorphic storm.

  A torrent of images attacked my brain, sand grains shrinking down to molecules then atoms. My mind expanded, riding sonic waves of energy, piercing the Moon’s surface, drilling through layers, lusting the Moon’s core.

  The geothermal energy boiled and hissed like red lava. I began to soak it up, every cell spasming as the absorption of the lunar life force brutalized my body with a million volts of magic.

  I burned and bled and healed in a thousand different ways. I fell onto my back and screamed but I could barely process the pain.

  The morphs shrieked, suspended in mid-shifting, half-human, half-monster, as the morphing effect weakened, and their mutating cellular structures were pulled in every direction.

  Suddenly, my core emptied as quickly as it had been filled, all energy escaping through my pores as the Moon rejected our connection.

  Selene had been fooled for a time, but now she resisted. She would not be so easily invaded and plundered of power.

  I gasped, barely able to breathe.

  “What happened?” Kirsi said as she helped me sit up.

  The morphing resumed. The beasts started to grow, stretching out to terrifying proportions.

  “Nothing I can’t fix,” I whispered, grinding my teeth.

  Watch me.

  I attacked Selene head on, capturing every drop of Serenity Valley’s lavish elemental energy. I cried out as my cells sucked in the etheric essence of an entire enchanted kingdom.

  It all was within me, the sorcery, the witchcraft, purple tree energy, the charms of the blossomed gardens, the songs of the stream water, the magnetic fields of the stars—it was all mine.

  I feared I would swallow the world whole.

  Cradling everything into a single impulse I hurled it at Selene.

  You will bend to my will. You will succumb.

  The Moon quaked. The morphs got caught in the middle of this battle of wills, half transformed, going crazy with their desire to shapeshift.

  The attack of the Immortals was sudden and swift. They charged the morphs, taking them by surprise, blades shining above their heads. Axes and swords whistled as they fell with such speed, chopping down the morphs.

  The beasts recovered some of their wits and lunged at the Immortals, claws and jaws snapping, eyes fevered with rage.

  The air was heavy with the scent of sweat and blood. Immortals and morphs collided until they became one big expanse of flesh.

  Despite superior numbers, the morphs were both weakened in states of mid-shifting and unable to think as a pack with their minds severely impaired. Their healing powers were low in such conflicted states.

  They had been seconds away from tasting their triumph, the full realization of a hundred-year dream, to be at the peak of their powers, finally, but a single witch put an end to all that. Now they were dying.

  Deformed, mangled, legs spotted in fur, jaws protruding unnaturally, unable to close, mismatched limbs, skin mixed in scales and feathers, all too grotesque, not for this world, the stuff of nightmares.

  I turned away. I was done. Everything had detonated within me and now I was hollow. It was no longer a matter of my control.

  Out of nowhere, a demon dog trotted my way. I rubbed my eyes to purge the apparition. The terrible beast had a scarred long snout and ruined fur like the other demons that had hounded me before, but it was huge in comparison, taller than a horse and thicker than a bull.

  Its nostrils flared, sniffing the night air. It sensed something.

  Me.

  Another demon materialized out of thin air, a gigantic wolf. Then another and another and another. They kept coming—dogs, wolves, bears—sniffing, drooling, circling the dome they couldn’t see or understand.

  Were they scent phantoms after all? A strange result of interbreeding with morphs, maybe?

  Kirsi gripped her sword, her face losing its certainty. I stayed still.

  The smallest sound and they’ll know we’re here.

  I had nothing left in me, nothing. I searched again and found no energy other than the heart’s electricity which supported my mortal, human life. If those things saw us, Kirsi was completely on her own. I didn’t have the energy left for a yoga kick.

  One of the demons came so close, I could smell its foul breath. It scratched at the thin halo with a terrifying shriek.

  Kirsi pounced, driving her sword into the demon’s neck. I shivered as the thing choked and gagged trying to scream. The rest of the demons flocked to their dying mate.

  A figure blurred past, taking down two more demons with a single swing of his sword. Winter.

  The other demons pounced on him all at once, six, seven, no… eight. Eight hellish fiends digging into every exposed inch of his flesh. His pale skin turned red as he bled out everywhere at once, but it didn’t slow Winter one bit.

  The sword of my Immortal protector kept coming down again and again, his powerful legs kicking demons off him with ease, his body spinning like a dervish as he ducked and jumped.

  The monstrous bodies began to fall as Winter hacked them down, until they became a pile of flesh and fur drenched in blood.

  Luckily, I don’t have the energy to throw up.

  Winter nodded to us, then hurried to rejoin the battle.

  I took a deep breath. The ranks of the morphs were thinning—the Immortals clearly had the upper hand. I just wanted to go home and soak in a hot tub for two hours.

  A man emerged from the distant carnage. An Immortal. He walked with long strides, at a leisurely pace, toward the crater. He was very tall, all sinewy muscle, dressed in light golden armor and a long, scarlet cape. His skin shone bronze under the robust moonlight. His steps were measured but assured—each one of them bringing him closer to me.

  He was not like the other Immortals. His origins were impossible to place. He was certainly a mix, but something else, too. It felt like every charmed and every basic race and ethnicity had blended together to build his DNA chain.

  His gaze never left me. His eyes were hard to hold—two black stones burning with the intensity of celestial space. Eyes that could stop a heart.

  With every fiber in me, I knew the name of this Immortal, I knew that he should never learn of my existence—or my name. It had to be Chaos.

  He studied me carefully, his face touched with a quiet curiosity as if he had refused to accept that I might be real. He could see me as clear as day. Things like invisibility spells held no dominion over his vision.

  I was unable to look away. It was as if the Sun was falling to the Earth. His blood called to me. A primeval connection hummed inside my chest, urging me to abandon the protection of the halo dome, to abandon all logic, and meet this true and ancient enemy on the battlefield.

  He raised his hand in front of h
is chest. Kirsi fell to the ground, grabbing her throat with both hands. I froze.

  The Moon hung in the sky above, a yellow disc trimmed in blood orange. My heart fluttered. I knew I should do something, help Kirsi, summon my magic, run… anything would have been better than standing there, waiting for Chaos to choose whether to kill me quick or drain my insides.

  Winter broke from the fight. He raged across the field to get to Chaos.

  To get to me. Again.

  Chaos sensed danger and spun around, drawing an enormous sword.

  The two Immortals clashed, blade on blade. When their swords met, it was deafening. I had never seen or heard anything like it. They fought with unnatural strength and speed, muscles bulging and glistening, legs leaping to heights to defy the laws of gravity.

  The passage of time came to a halt. All that had existed, since the beginning of all things, was there in the thirst for blood on the faces of these two ultimate warriors. Their swords moved like hypnotic pieces in the violent machine of life and death. Their bodies became drenched in the sweat of all creatures big and small. They lunged, swung, spun and sliced with a lust for survival inherent in all living things in all worlds.

  I thought this fight would last forever. I thought it was the eternal struggle of life coming into being before my very eyes.

  Maybe I was just in shock and denial.

  Three Immortals stepped away from the battle to gather around the titanic duel and watch. Kirsi climbed to her feet, coughing, as Chaos released his hold on her throat to focus his power solely on Winter.

  “Help him,” I told her, gripped by fear.

  “When two Shadows fight, no one can interfere,” she said, darkness spreading inside her eyes.

  My stomach turned. Winter’s face was distorted under the weight of the colossal effort, a shimmering rage rising from deep within.

  Chaos’s face, on the other hand, registered neither fatigue nor concern. In fact, there were times I thought this whole damned battle amused him.

  An invisible whip lassoed around my waist, yanking me forward. I barely had a moment to catch the wicked grin on Chaos’s lips as his superior force dragged me to him like I was a ragdoll.