The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set (87 page)

“You will be protected here. Sit.” She gestured to the built in plank that ran all the way around the inside walls of the shelter.

Amy happily got herself onto it, and she was pretty sure Paul followed suit because he didn’t want to be without the bedsheet.

Dark brown eyes appraised him through weathered sockets. “You look like the antelope aware of the lion. Do not worry, wizard, we lions have already fed.”

Panic flashed over his face.

The Dessec boomed her laughter once more and Amy nudged him. “She’s teasing,” she whispered, grinning.

He didn’t look convinced.

All at once, her laughter faded, and the old woman lowered herself in front of Paul. She took his right hand in hers and those almost black eyes grew tender. “My great grandchild could not exist without you. That makes you my grandson – my
K’lanseun
. My home is your home. Welcome.”

“Thank you. I am humbled – truly.”

“And you,” she turned to Amy, “it’s time to let go of your guilt. No one is inconvenienced by your feelings but you. Let it go, child.”

Embarrassment squirmed through her. “It’s hard. It’s not the done thing, you know? You’re not supposed to love two men.”

“A dragon is about to rise from extinction, as demons and angels fall into it, and you are worried about the done thing?”

Well, when she put it like that…

“The heart will always live by its own rules, and I am not sure that love is something to be controlled. I don’t know about having two men, but I do know about having two children, and I will tell you this: a mother does not love one child any less than the other – differently, yes, but not less. So, maybe, it is okay just to love, hmmm? Let it flow as it wants to, and see where it takes you.”

Wow.

Of all the people she thought she’d be having this conversation with, she hadn’t dreamed it would be Pueblo’s grandmother … and she never in a million years thought it would go like this. “You’re … the coolest granny ever.”

She slapped her thigh in triumph. “I’ve always thought so,” she beamed. “Now…” She signalled to one of her tribe, and he promptly brought over a tray filled with two bowls of water. “Do not become like prunes out here. Drink.”

“Thank you.” They both took the bowls and drank with vigour. When finished, Amy took Paul’s from him and placed the empty bowls back on the tray. “I just realised that I can’t feel any quakes here. There was a huge one just before the baby teleported us away.”

“You are in a place called the Wastelands. It is considered a death trap by some, but it has also been my safe-haven for three centuries. You will feel no quakes here – this space is protected, somehow. It is a matter of fate – I do not question it, I am just grateful for it. This is where I was when my tribe was slaughtered.”

How awful
, thought Amy. “Before we arrived here, we were attacked. The same shaman who murdered the Dessec is after my—oooooOOO!” she cried and leant her body forward to relieve the odd, popping sensation between her legs.

“Amy?” Paul called out, startled.

“I’m okay, I’m…”
What the…?
 

A warm trickle ran down her thigh.
Oh, holy crap, my stupid bladder! If I’ve just wet myself…
 

Zaynolita looked gleeful. “Good, good!”

“Good?”

“The baby is coming.”

“It is?”

Paul’s hand rubbed her back. “I think your water just broke.”

“What?!”

He looked down at the ground between her legs. “See?”

No, she couldn’t fucking see – her stomach was the size of Everest. She scowled at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” replied Zaynolita. “Stand.”

Paul helped her up, and the trickle down her leg was replaced by a goddamn river. “Oh, Christ…”
This is it…
“Oh, God!”

“Hush, child. Do not panic. Breathe.”

Breathe … right … that’s what they do in all the movies. Damn the apocalypse and its lack of antenatal classes.

Zaynolita, still smiling, made her way to the centre of the hut where the miracle tree stood. A flash of sadness flew over her countenance, but was replaced with a look of deference. “Life always finds a way.” She placed a hand on its trunk. “This is a good place to be born.”

~*~

It seemed like the wrong place to die.

A fairy should die in the woods, or the forest, somewhere out there among nature; anywhere but in a fucking condo in the east of London.

Pueblo sat on the floor of Amy’s bedroom, unable to take his eyes off the shimmering dust that had settled on the carpet in Teigas’ place. Even his clothes had turned to dust.

Opposite that spot and to his right, the shaman’s dead body lay encased in that black, tar-like substance that had been his curse.

Pueblo frowned. He didn’t want to look at the shaman. He glanced back at the fairy dust.

It had happened so quickly.

Teigas hadn’t even said a word.

He kept expecting to hear his voice.
Come on, imp, you’re supposed to be like my fucking Yoda. I should be seeing your translucent, holographic body roundabout now, while you echo that crap you call guidance in my ear.
 

Nothing.

Fuck.

His eyes suddenly burned and before he knew it, he was stifling back sobs as tears streamed down his face.

In a moment of impulsive rage, his foot went through a dresser. “Fuck! I told you to stay out the fucking way!”

And then he just felt shitty for getting angry at the imp and breaking Amy’s furniture.

He took a couple of breaths and got himself together, feeling strangely irritated that he had no body to bury. Fifty-five years and ‘poof’.

Getting himself to his feet, he looked around for some kind of container. Finding nothing, he made his way to the adjoining bathroom where he finally emerged with a small jar that he had emptied of some pink, floral-scented balls that he couldn’t make head nor tail of – were they supposed to go in the bath or down the toilet? Or maybe they were like an air freshener or potpourri, or something…

Kneeling down on the floor he gathered what he could of the fairy dust and placed it in the jar. Sealing it with the lid, he set it down on the other dresser – the one he hadn’t broken.

That would have to do. “I’ll come back and give you a proper sending off, old friend,” he promised.

Right now, though, he had to get to Amy.

Quake after quake kept coming, some big, some small; all of them relentless. And in his gut, he knew. He
knew
the baby was coming. He felt it in his veins; in his blood…

He’d just caught the trail of Amy and Paul disappearing when he had arrived, and although he should have been surprised with where that trail led, he found, instead that it all made a weird kind of sense. Everything was falling into place, and maybe it was this sense of faith in fate itself, that had him noting he didn’t feel jealous, or angry, or bitter at the scent of the obvious union that had taken place in this room – just relieved that they had gotten away and that Amy and the baby were safe.

‘It’s a skill in trust…’
 

Well, he’ll be damned – he really was letting her fly…

And, as the ground shook and he bent his knees to keep himself steady, he all at once realised that he
did
have trust – in her, in himself and in the universe – because really, what else was there? If she didn’t follow her heart, nothing she said or did would mean anything, anyway. Her free choice was the only thing that mattered, and
that
was in itself quite a freeing thought.

Pueblo glanced at the jar with a lop-sided smile. “Hey, look at me – I’m growing.”

He looked away before grief for the loss of his friend could claim him again.

Instead, he thought of his son, and teleported out of there.

~*~

Well, this was bound to be a bitch of a headache, thought Katherine.

Katarra moaned, consciousness pulling the demon awake. “Ouch.”

Katherine continued applying the healing. “Yep. Keep still. You’ve got one huge lump on your head.”

The Brujii opened her eyes with difficulty, looked like she as about to throw up, and finally zeroed in on her face. “God turned up,” she croaked out, “lookin’ just like Karl.”

Katherine went cold inside, from both fear and anger. It was a reaction she had mastered over the years, so she brushed it to one side and got on with sorting out the bruising. “I’m almost done with your wound – sorry it’s not as thorough as how Elena would tend to it. She’s the natural healer, not me.”

Katarra stared her straight in the eye. “I really don’t want to say this, but I don’t know if she’s gonna get him back. I’m sorry. I didn’t get any sense of Karl there at all.”

Katherine finished up. It would have to do – the lump was a little smaller and a little less purple than a minute ago.

“If she can’t kill him, you might have to. You know that, don’t you? Can you do it?”

The cold settled more deeply within her body. “Where did they go?”

Katarra pointed to the great big split in the ground.

She sighed. “That’s where I figured. Guess I was hoping you’d point to … anywhere else, really.” She made her way to the edge and looked down.  Good job she wasn’t scared of heights. She fingered the amethyst-encrusted amulet around her neck. That, and the oils she had anointed her pulse points with, created a mystical armour that should work like an astronaut’s suit. As long as the amulet stayed on, she should reach her destination without any injury, or any pressure build-up in the brain. Demons and angels wouldn’t have the same problem.

She looked over at Katarra who was now standing. “Are you coming?”

The Brujii approached her. “Did you hear what I said before? About Karl? Can you kill him?”

Her stomach sat heavy in her body, like a leaden weight. Her reply was comprised of the only thing she knew with any certainty. “I would do anything for Elena.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

When Mary had recounted her experience of Hell at their last breakfast, she had described how hot it had been. But Hell had also been located, so far as Elena could make out, one step outside of the human dimension.

Where the Dragon resided was in the physical world. She was quite literally
in
the centre of the Earth, and it was cool. Cool to the point of being too cold. And it was pitch black.

She’d lost sight of Karl on the way down.

She let out a small yelp when her feet contacted something solid, immediately dematerialising herself and reappearing some metres higher up so she could land again more carefully, purposely slowing down her descent.

Whoa! She’d
never
have been able to do that pre-apocalypse.

And maybe the four snacks you had a couple of hours back helped a little,
reminded her inner-voice. It was a welcome reminder in the belly of the planet. She was pretty much as powerful as she was ever going to get at this precise moment, and it made her feel a little better.

After a few more seconds remaining silent, listening for Karl and sensing her surroundings, she opened her palm and shone light from it. It was a green light, casting everything in a slightly eerie glow, but at least it was light.

She let it fall all around her, taking in the dark brown walls, surprisingly smooth… She was in an empty cavern. Stalagmites came up out of the ground. Ahead of her, to her right, the cavern narrowed and seemed to lead into a tunnel – and it looked like her only option.

At least that makes decision-making easy.

She ventured forward, letting her magical green torch lead the way.

The tunnel was smaller than she’d expected and seemed to go on forever, but right at the point when she began to wonder if she’d made a mistake coming this way, it widened out and exited into another cavern – this one was
huge
. Huge, and filled with human-sized crystalline objects that emitted their own light. What were they? Super-sized quartz crystals? But they looked quite polished for raw crystals, and each of them seemed to hold mineral deposits that created shadowed layers within the—

Oh … my … God.

She stopped breathing when she realised what she was seeing: Eggs.

Dragon eggs.

Maybe about twenty of them.

She put out her glow and the light from the eggs seemed to intensify.

“Misleading, isn’t it?” A very small, old woman, emerged from the opposite side of the cave, an equally looking old man beside her. But whereas he was a normal kind of size, she was tiny.

“What is?” asked Elena, ready to attack if necessary.

“Life,” she replied, her raspy voice sounding very much like her mother’s had before she’d grown young again. “You expect one thing – think you know everything – but you get given something else instead. One Dragon, we were told. One. The last. Looks like someone told a teeny-weeny little lie.”

“Maybe nobody lied. Maybe sometimes, we just don’t get to know everything, although … I think the Malattal predicted this.”

“Yes … their final prophecies. I believe it is the last line you are referring to.”

“Dragons – plural.”

“Any chance you remember the fourth line?”

She shook her head.

“The Totilemi, young and wise – age will herald their demise.”
 

“You’re … you’re a Totilemi demon?”

“I am Sophia, last man standing – minus the man. This is Ri Tian – he’s not a demon, just old.” The man, who Elena guessed from his looks was Chinese, bowed his head in greeting.

She found herself dropping her own head out of courtesy. “Sophia … Sophia…” Something clicked in her brain; something Mary had said. “You’re the one Gwain and Mary rescued from Hell, right?”

She smiled. It wavered. “I looked a bit better then.”

Over that fateful breakfast, Mary had mentioned how the Totilemi had all looked like children. No wonder this ‘old woman’ looked tiny – she was. She was the same size as maybe an eight year old, but with the face of a hundred year old lady.