The Silverwing's Sorceress: THe Shadow Slayers, Book 2.5 (10 page)

She moved behind him as he rolled the stone, inch by inch, until gravity took hold and loosed it down the hill, rolling like a ball of wrath until it connected with the trunk of a towering pine. The sound of the impact shook the sky, and birds from the nearest treetops took flight in a loud cacophony of flapping wings and panicked screeches.

Jaxon’s eyes widened. “Don’t worry. I’ll put that back.”

But Abbey wasn’t listening. Her own eyes were wide at the gaping hole left in the earth. “Do you know any animals that install steps in their burrows?”

“What?” He peered into the darkened cave alongside her. “Do you people have tunnels everywhere? Is there any mountain under us at all, or is the entire thing going to give way in the next good rain?” She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. “Abbey?”

“Uh… Do you think we should go down?”

“How could we not? Follow me.” He took her hand and helped her down the stairs. Like the other tunnel, small torches burst into flames, lighting their way. But unlike the other tunnel, this one didn’t have any writing or designs on the walls.

The first room they came to on the right had plastic tubs lining one wall and decomposing plastic bags along the other. Nearer the entry was a stack of folding chairs and a camp stove.

Abbey stopped in the center of the room, her skin prickling in goose bumps. “What the heck is this place? And what are those?” She pointed to the wall of bags.

Jaxon walked to a black trash bag and nudged it with his foot, then a moment later, he tore the brittle plastic to reveal a rolled-up sleeping bag. “Supplies. Not body parts, if that’s what you were thinking.”

She blew out a breath. How did he know her so well? “I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It would have reeked down here.” Unless the bodies were done decomposing. What did she know about forensics? “Sleeping bags?”

He opened another bag containing pillows and blankets. “Perhaps it’s a bomb shelter.”

“I guess.” She walked to the stacked containers, pulled one down, and cracked the lid open. “Oh my gosh.” She held up the framed photo of her and her parents when she was a baby. “I remember seeing this one, but I wasn’t sure what happened to it.”

She rifled through the contents and found more pictures, even some of her earliest drawings. Just as she was reaching to get down the second box, Jaxon called her. “Abbey, look at this.”

She turned, and in his hand was a small voice recorder. “You’re kidding me!” She jogged to him and took the recorder from his grasp. “This must have been my parents’ storage area. It looks like the stuff has been here since way before Claudius built the house.”

“I agree.”

“Can you imagine if our messages are still on here?” Her eyes went glossy. “I haven’t heard my mom’s voice in sixteen years.” She pressed the play button, but nothing happened. “Oh no.”

Jaxon rested his hand on her shoulder. “It may simply need new batteries. May I see it?”

When he removed the cover, the ends of the batteries were coated in white powder. “We need something to clean the acid from the compartment.”

Abbey went to the bags with the bedding and found an old pillowcase. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Jaxon took the linen and wiped the batteries and the player clean, but when he reinserted the batteries, it still didn’t play.

“Shoot!” Abbey didn’t try to hide her disappointment.

“It’s all right, dove. It just needs new batteries.”

“We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, Jaxon! Where am I supposed to find new batteries?”

“You have only one night left, then tomorrow we’ll use the neighbor’s phone and call your grandmother to pick you up. Think how delighted she’ll be to have this treasure trove of family memorabilia. We’ll stop for batteries first thing when we get to the bottom of the mountains.”

Abbey yanked the recorder from his hand and stripped the batteries from the compartment. “Screw that.”

If witches could cast spells strong enough to power her home and ward the entire mountain, she could sure as hell juice up a couple of double A’s. She grasped them in her hand and closed her eyes. “I don’t have a rhyme for this, but mountain, if you’re listening to me, I need you. Please grant me your power to reenergize these batteries.”

The small cylinders began to warm in her hand. “Something’s happening!” she told Jaxon, but then in the next instant, the batteries were so blazing hot she chucked them across the room to keep from scorching her hand. They hit the dirt wall and exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks as the torches along the walls shot flames two feet into the air.

“What the hell was that, mountain?”

“Abbey… Shh!” Jaxon took the recorder from her hand and rolled his finger along the volume button. “Listen.”

“And then, cupcake, when you find the porcelain frog, look in his mouth. He has your next clue! But I can tell you that today’s surprise is almost as sweet as you are!”

Everything in Abbey’s body went silent. She’d never heard this recording before and it was painful and wonderful to hear her mother’s voice again.

“Syd?” another voice called in the background.

Jaxon took another step closer to Abbey. “Who is Syd?”

“My mom,” Abbey whispered.

A shuffling noise scratched over the speaker, as if her mother was turning it off—but it kept playing. “In here, Charles. I was just doing another scavenger hunt for Abbey.”

“You’re going to spoil that girl,” he said.

Her mother laughed, and it sounded like she set down the recorder. “Well, I can’t let you do all the spoiling.” It was silent for a moment, then she said more quietly, “I’m just teasing you, sweetheart. What’s the matter with you today?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to discuss it in front of Abbey, but I learned some upsetting news at the council meeting. Claudius is petitioning to prevent Abbey from being the rightful heir to the priesthood. He says that in the event of my death, he should be the next in line.”

“What a little brat! The priesthood goes to your firstborn child—and that’s Abbey! I can’t believe your parents even allowed him to submit a formal petition.”

“That’s the thing,” her father said softly, “they’re supporting him.”

Her mom did nothing but breathe for so long that Abbey was scared the tape had run out…but then she spoke. “That’s absurd. They’ve had nothing but grief from that boy. Half the coven is frightened of him and his erratic powers, and that’s nothing to be proud of, Charles.”

“I’m trying to teach him more control, but he is gifted for his age. It just hurts that my brother would attempt to take away the priesthood from my own daughter…his own niece.”

“Well, you aren’t going to allow it, are you?”

“Of course not. Abigail is the heir. A piece of paper can’t change that.”

“And you don’t think he would…hurt her…do you?”

“Syd! That’s my brother. How could you even say that?”

Her mother’s voice was all anguish and guilt, and Abbey wished she could reach out and hug her. “Charles, I love you. I would never want to say anything to hurt you, but the rumors aren’t going away…”

“About the summer camp? Please don’t bring that up again. My family has put it behind us.”

“Maybe you have, but the boy’s parents still want answers. They’re a powerful family in the coven, and they have a right to know how their son—one of the best swimmers on his high school team—could have drowned on a hundred-meter race to the buoy. The water isn’t even that deep.”

“That was the problem, Syd! His feet tangled in the weeds. To think that Claudius would drown him just because the boy won for class president is insane.”

“There were weeds,” she conceded, “but they were knotted around his ankles, Charles.
Knotted.
Not tangled. And your brother was swimming alongside him the entire time. Why would Kevin have kicked around in the weeds where he couldn’t touch, and why, if his forearms and the top of his head were visible on the surface of the water, did Claudius not swim down and free him?”

“The water was murky from all the thrashing. He couldn’t see.”

“It was less than six feet deep. He could have felt his way down.”

“Claudius was in shock, and he was scared of being blamed,” her father said. “And apparently, he was right.”

“I understand your loyalty, and I love you for it. But if you ever loved me, hear my words—you keep an eye on our daughter. And yourself.”

When the tape player clicked and the voices stopped, Abbey couldn’t do anything but stand there with her chin drooping toward the floor. Jaxon regarded her with a heavy brow, waiting.

“The brakes…” she began.

He nodded. “The brakes.”

“We have to tell somebody. We have to go to the police. Maybe if we take this tape…” But when she popped open the cover of the recorder, it was empty. It had been empty the entire time.

Chapter Seven

“I let him lead the coven. All these years, I let a man like that take my rightful place in my coven,” Abbey repeated. Of all the recent revelations, this and her parents’ possible murder seemed to be hitting her the hardest.

Jaxon helped her to the bed, having insisted she should lie down. She was trembling from head to foot, and he ached to ease her pain. He brushed her hair from her eyes and adjusted the pillow under her head, but she pushed his hand away and sat. “I want you to do it,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Give me your blood. Heal my brand. You were right—I’ve been hiding from my life for too long.”

“Are you sure now is the right time?” he asked.

“I’m not waiting any longer. I need to get better so I can take back what’s mine—so I can bring honor to my family’s name again…if that’s even possible after everything my uncle’s done. My father was a good man, and he wanted
me
to lead our people. That’s what I’m going to do.”

He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I want that for you, Abbey. I truly do.”

She blew out a gusty breath and stripped off her shirt, leaving her upper half clad in only her lavender lace bra and her tan, stretchy bandages. He swallowed, ashamed he was so turned on by the sight of her pale nipples through the thin, lacy fabric.

“So, what do we do? Do you know the spell?”

When she stripped off her jeans, leaving her in only a wisp of lavender lace panties, he stood to put a few inches between them. “Demiáre don’t need spells…not in the sense of saying the right words. If it’s going to work, my blood alone should be enough.”

She scooted off the bed and walked to the bathroom. He followed in time to see her pull the bath mat to the middle of the cold tile floor.

“What are you doing, dove?”

She flipped her red hair off her shoulder and crossed her arms. “I may not have built it, but this house is mine, and I’m not going to get blood everywhere.”

He blinked. With Abbey’s almost phobic aversion to blood, he was floored she was handling this so well. “Good idea.”

Seeing him take his knife from the pocket of his jeans and set it on the counter, she asked, “Is that what you’re going to use?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to…”

“Cut my palm and transfer the blood from there.”

Abbey nodded. “Okay. Sounds good. Hold on a sec.”

She turned and dashed to the toilet. He heard the sound of the seat banging open, directly followed by the sound of her stomach being purged repeatedly. When she was finished, she strode out, rinsed her mouth in the sink, then came to stand before him once again. “Let’s do this.”

She began unwrapping the first layer of cloth. By the time she was done, the long bandage was in a heap at her feet, but the pink-tinged shreds of paper towel still clung to her abdomen.

She grasped one edge of the paper, then paused. “You haven’t seen this in a while. It’s not pretty.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She tilted her chin high and pulled off the strips. Jaxon fought to control his reaction, but seeing his deranged father’s brand on Abbey’s stomach filled him with rage. That his half brother could have carved Brakken’s sign into Abbey was inconceivable—and all for some misguided vendetta against Kara herself, that Abbey had no part in. He would never owe Kara a greater debt than for killing Gable when she’d had the chance.

“Is it worse than you remember?” she asked, her cheeks and neck a splotchy rose.

He shook his head. “No. The memory of that brand is seared into my mind. Finding you at Gable’s mercy that night is something I’ll never forget.” He walked to her and took her hands in his. “But let this day be a day of healing. For your body. And our minds. Let it be a day of new beginnings.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “I’d like that.”

His gaze fell to her supple lips, but he didn’t want to push her in this moment. There would be time for that when she was healed. So instead, he placed one chaste kiss on her brow and lowered her to the rug. He reached for the pocketknife and poised the blade above his palm. “My entire life I wondered why, if there was a Maker, he would allow me to be born to such parents. But in this moment, I understand. If my blood can heal you, then I accept my lineage with a grateful heart.”