The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (37 page)

I tried to get back on my feet, but my body burned as a thousand pinpricks pierced my skin. Looking up, I observed the swarm of faeries flying overhead. Those weren’t pinpricks; they were arrows. Looking down at my body, I watched as blood began to seep out of the tiny wounds on my skin. I fell to my knees, not yet defeated but unable to stand up another moment.

Suddenly the word formed in my mind, but I couldn’t be certain if I’d be able to say it. Would it be loud enough? The word slipped through my lips. “
Oscail.
”

The man in white stood above me. “You are valiant, young one, but you will not win alone.”

Refusing to look away, I stared the stranger in the eye. “I am never alone.”

“No, she is not.”

My heart leapt as I leaned toward the sound of a new voice. I’d done it! I’d opened the portal!

My brother, Cabhan, stood there, looking every bit the warrior angel. Though he’d given up his life to be with his mortal love, he’d come to save me. The man in white looked taken aback, but didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He held his hand aloft and with a soft
pop
a sword appeared in his grip.

Cabhan didn’t hesitate. He charged forward and as he did so, what appeared to be a full army of angels charged out of the portal, their swords at the ready. I managed to stand, but my unsteady legs threatened to fail me. Waiting, I searched for some sign of my parents. Though it had only been a short time, I needed to see them, to feel their arms about me. Just like a child, I longed for their comfort. But they didn’t come.

“Cali, are you all right?” Cabhan flew to my side, landing and taking my hand in his. I looked up into his eyes and I didn’t need to say that I wasn’t. This had all gone horribly wrong.

“Go and block him, all right? I need to get to the portal,” I said, knowing that I would surely die the moment I touched the lush green grass of Ireland.

Cabhan went after my captor, his relentless nature coming out. The strange man only laughed. He seemed to find Cabhan’s efforts merely entertaining and not threatening in the least. Meanwhile, faeries fell everywhere as the battle continued.

As quickly as I could, I crawled toward the portal, though it terrified me. With the arrival of Cabhan, I hadn’t had a chance to look at it properly, and the swirling vortex of dark that stood out on the mountain before me looked like nothing more than a revolving black hole. Occasionally, a color would shine out from the opening. Hues of purple, red, yellow, and blue, among others, seemed to burst out of it periodically.

Though sick from the exertion, I made my way to the opening, my hand outstretched. This was it. Now or never. Taking a deep breath, I stood and backed up a couple of steps.

The sounds of the battle increased and I could hear the clashing of swords. “Cali, go!” Cabhan’s voice spurred me on as an arrow whizzed past my head.

I ran forward as quickly as I could and jumped off the side of the mountain, toward the vortex that would take me away from it all.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

KELLEN—
LIAR

Standing in my father’s kitchen, I watched as the scene before me melted away. In mere moments, I went from looking at my beloved mother to looking at a corpse. She sat there at the kitchen table, a rotting, stinking corpse with no trace of her former soul, her former self. Of course, I had no idea whether the corpse I looked at was actually my mother’s or just some random poor soul’s body.

My stomach heaved and I leapt out of the chair, mentally vomiting on the inside, freaking out. Willock still sat there, made of flesh and bone, though he’d lost his white doctor’s coat. His eyes mocked me, but Willock’s presence didn’t upset me nearly as much as Stephen’s absence.

Where Stephen had been standing, there now stood a man who wasn’t a man at all, but the Lord of Faerie.. He appeared exactly as I remembered.

“Greetings, young St. James,” Arawn said in a high-pitched voice. More shadow than man, he appeared as a black mass with little distinct characteristics to identify him save his gleaming red eyes. You could make out a chin, arms, legs and so on, but it appeared as though someone had taken scissors and simply cut his form out of the air. Pulsing through from behind the cutout was nothing but blackness. He was too disturbing to look at. Too much to take in.

Despite the intangible physical structure of Arawn, he wore a rust-colored robe that fell loosely from his body in a thousand wrinkles. In his hand, a staff that I didn’t recognize from our last meeting supported him. Perhaps he was injured?

Arawn’s voice captured my attention. “So we meet again. It was inevitable, of course. I arranged it, after all.” Arawn’s voice sounded too high-pitched. It grated on my nerves and senses.

Watching him carefully as he spoke, I noticed that some things had changed about Arawn. If I focused, I could see small patches of light shining through him, like tiny fractures.

“So sorry about your father. I took his soul, you see. He was a bit of a bastard anyway,” Arawn continued.

Standing, I glared at Arawn. “Only because you made him that way. You stole away the real Stephen years ago. My father was nothing more than a changeling.” It hurt to say that—in part because I didn’t want it to be true and in part because I didn’t know what that meant for me if it was. Was I a changeling too? Would I turn bad?

Arawn’s eyes popped open wider and they seemed to nearly encompass his entire face for a moment. Twin red lasers against a sea of darkness. “Very good, Kellen. You are quite intelligent, aren’t you? Yes, he was a changeling, but a very good one, because he was my personal creation!” Looking around the room, he observed, “This is a rather unpleasant scene, do you not think so?” He gestured at the collection of corpses. He waved a hand and in the next instant, the three of us were sitting in the study.

Arawn looked around, seeming to nod his head in approval. “Yes, yes, much better. I have to say,” he said, looking back to me, “I do apologize for having your mother’s body exhumed, but I really had little choice in the matter. It was the best possible way to bring her back for my purposes.”

Expelling the breath in my lungs, I stared at him. Pure, unadulterated rage filled every fiber of my being as I inhaled. Standing, I ran at him, only to be knocked back ten feet and thrown into the doorframe.

Pain sliced down my back like a knife. I could barely see through my eyes for the red haze that clouded them. My ears rang as though my head was on the inside of a tolling bell. I wanted to lash out again, to go after him, but I didn’t stand a chance if I did.

I needed to stand a chance. That was the only way I could possibly get back to Cali.

Doing a quick inventory, I realized that nothing had been broken. Nothing seemed out of place, no blood. Everything just hurt like hell. Gingerly I stood, and walked back to the couch, my head held high. If we were going to be pleasant, I might as well keep up the pretense.

“Sorry about that. You…you took me by surprise.” I inclined my head in his direction. Arawn gestured to an armless chair across from him. I took it.

Arawn chuckled. “Of course. Completely understandable given the circumstances, Kellen.”

Something about the way he said my name made me uncomfortable, like those emergency broadcast messages that popped on the television occasionally. The strong beeping became too much to take and I usually ended up turning it off or leaving the room. Arawn’s use of my name gave me that same sort of feeling, though I couldn’t turn Arawn off or leave the room.

Willock had been pacing behind Arawn since we’d moved. He kept looking at me and then looking away as Arawn spoke. It seemed as though he was undecided about something.

Though I wanted to dig deeper, to find out about the family that was even more of a mystery now than it had been before, I realized that I would need to play it cool. If Arawn knew that I wanted something, even information, he’d make sure I didn’t get it.

“Why my family? Why send a changeling in place of the real Stephen? Why not send the first one back?”

“The real Stephen St. James wanted to see our realm, to visit Faerie. He entered it one night in dreams and I chose to keep him,” Arawn said, setting his hands on what I assumed were his knees.

“I know what he did,” I said, trying to keep the impatience that would probably get me killed out of my voice. “I mean, why did you keep
him
and send the clone back?”

“I’m not unlike other men, Kellen. Once I reached two thousand years of age, I started thinking about to whom I would leave my legacy. I have no children. I wanted children, but Danu…She refused,” Arawn said. Talking to him could only be described as maddening because I had no facial expressions to refer to, much like having a phone conversation. “Danu and I were lovers, you see,” he added.

Shock took every question straight out of my mind and I sat at the edge of my seat, enthralled by the most unusual of cliffhangers.

Arawn laughed. “Ah! You should see your visage, Kellen. It betrays your thoughts! Oh, how it betrays your thoughts! I did not look then as I do now. I was handsome, perhaps the most handsome god ever. Yet Danu would not consent to be my wife. She would not have a family with me, though I was created for her. She claimed that she sensed darkness in me. That I would turn from her one day. She was a bit prophetic, you see, for that was exactly what happened. The dark seduced me and I fell under its spell, for it is not possible for light to exist alone—there must be darkness to balance it.”

“What? You—”

“Yes! That is the truth, Kellen. I was once a god on the side of the light. Can you even imagine?” Arawn sighed again and seemed to rub his hands together. “As a result, of my defection I could never have children, you see. When Stephen St. James snuck into my rath one night, I kept him as my own. I only sent the imposter aboveground when that moaning Taiclaigh started showing up every night with offerings.”

My jaw clenched. I didn’t like him talking about my Grandda like that. “It could have killed my grandparents,” I said.

“No, no, it wouldn’t have. A changeling’s job is to always keep up the pretense of the role. However, it might have caused problems for the family. I was surprised to find out about you and your brother. I’ve never known any of them to have families before.”

“Where is he now?” I asked. “The real Stephen.”

Arawn seemed to stiffen. Did a part of him care for Stephen? “He is hidden by glamour, much like what I used here.”

“And where is he hidden?” I asked.

“You act as though you are planning a rescue mission. But for what? He’s not even your father,” Arawn said, laughter in his voice. “Why does his location matter to you?”

I thought about the people that would want to know. Tai and Gran, even Addison. They would all want to know where this other Stephen was.

“But we aren’t here to discuss St. James, as you well know. We’re here to talk about the amulet.” Arawn looked calm as he said that and it angered me.

“You mean Danu’s amulet that you stole from her,” I said. Forcing myself to look at Arawn all this time hadn’t been an easy task, but I fixed my gaze on him. I would be strong, for myself and for Cali.

“Years later, when I bested her children with that cursed Bilé in battle, I went back into the heavens. I’d created the Ellipse, a secret backdoor from Faerie to heaven, before I left her. She didn’t even know it was there. Wasn’t that prophetic of
me
?”

I’d never known Danu, but I was willing to place a bet that she’d known all about Arawn’s secret entrance.

Arawn continued, growing increasingly excited. “Then I tried to take her power, but there was too much light within it and it weakened me, until only the darkest parts of my person remained visible to others. I probably would have died if I wasn’t made up of more dark than light. My beauty left me and my ugliness was bared for all to see.” Arawn gestured to his person as though he were a model showing off the latest fashion.

Shifting in my seat, I looked at Willock, who madly gestured that I return my attention to Arawn. I did.

“Casting aside her power of light, I forced it into the amulet she wore about her neck and I wrapped it in a special cloth, unable even to touch it. For those who use it, some of their life force is extracted with each use. For those of us who hold it, try to channel it…well, even those of us who are immortal can die from it. With it, I instituted The Call that would bind the Children of Danu to me. I only used the amulet for that reason, keeping it as far away from me as possible.”

“But why would you do that? Why not use the amulet and take over the Earth?”
Maybe I shouldn’t give him any ideas.

Arawn did not laugh this time. “Because of Lugh. Lugh and his Star Children! The light has always been more powerful than the dark. If I didn’t wield the amulet, then the Children of Danu would be free to return to the heavens, the evil that corrupts their souls would dissipate, and they would have enough presence of mind to make a
choice,
as it were.”

Arawn stood and began to pace. I had to delay him. Who knew what he had planned? One more moment of stalling would get me one more moment on Earth with Cali. My heart hurt and I pushed the dull ache to the back of my mind.

“Okay, so I think I get it. You got dissed by Mother Nature and developed parental urgings. Why do you need me?”

“Why, because of the amulet,” Arawn said.

“I don’t have it. I’ve never had it.”

“I know that. That fool Dillion stole it from me. Stole it right from my very house!” Arawn slammed his fist down onto nothing, empty air, though I could have sworn that I still felt a vibration.

“He’ll never give it to you. Not if it does all the things that you say it will,” I said.

Willock stepped forward. “We already have it.” Willock raised his right hand. He held the top of a long gold chain and raised it high in the air. At the end of the chain was a round green stone. There was an impression in the middle of the stone.