A Plague of Shadows (17 page)

The night filled with the sound of cracking bone and the warrior went down. He rolled to his side, bringing up his other sword as he did. Rorick moved, but not fast enough, the hammer was too heavy for him to dance out of the way like Abagail was. The sword took him in the side, slicing through his clothes and painting the snow with a swath of blood.

“No!” Abagail cried out. Her hand flared painfully, blindingly. She crumbled to her knees, wheezing through the pain crippling her sword hand. The sword clattered into the snow as her hand seized into talons.

Rorick stumbled away from the warrior and closer to Abagail. “It’s ok, he just cut me,” he said. His breath was labored and Abagail wasn’t sure that was all that had happened. He was bleeding bad, rivers of crimson running down his trousers, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

“You might have to let the power go, Abbie,” Rorick told her, standing beside her, waiting for the warrior to rise, which the darkling was having trouble doing.

“I won’t,” she said. “It can’t keep controlling me.”

“But you haven’t learned how to stop it yet,” he argued.

“No one taught my Aunt how to control it either,” she rasped through the pain. “She just figured it out on her own. If one person can do it, so can I.” Her glove slipped lower on her hand and she fought through the cramped muscles, trying to close her hand into a fist.

“But how?” Rorick asked, taking a defensive stance as the warrior rose.

“I don’t know,” she said. But there wouldn’t be time to figure it out, because just then a darkling had slipped away from Daphne’s attack and loomed up behind them. Abagail saw it just as it reached out toward Rorick. She launched herself forward, her legs springing her toward her friend, and knocked Rorick down just as the darkling was about to make contact with him.

Leona stood by the window, Skuld clutched tight to her chest. The porch was a ruined mess before her, and she was trying hard not to look into the warrior’s eyes. She knew what would happen if she did, she’d seen what had happened to her sister when she’d looked into the warrior’s eyes.

Behind her the fire popped and the logs tumbled further into the fireplace. The noise made her jump. She turned back to the fire to make sure none of the embers had fallen out onto the straw covered floor. All of the wood was glowing bright orange and the flames were still crackling.

She turned back to the scene outside in time to see the darkling loom up behind her sister and Rorick. Leona cried out moments before Abagail took Rorick to the ground.

The warrior turned to look at her through the window. She turned her eyes aside as his flashed menacingly. She needed to do something. Daphne wasn’t able to hold the darklings forever, and both her sister and Rorick were wounded.

How can you fight a darkling who can’t die?
She wondered. She’d never seen a darkling such as the warrior, and she wondered if he was a harbinger of darkness. She didn’t think so because he didn’t act like a human at all. But was that any indication?

He’s certainly not a ghost,
she mused.
Alright, Leo, think!
She scolded herself.
What would Abagail do?

She looked out at her sister, kicking out with her feet, moving herself ever further away from the shadow behind them. The warrior limped toward Abagail and Rorick. Rorick was pushing to a stance, his hammer in a blood soaked grip.

Use the fire,
she heard Skuld’s familiar voice in her mind.

“Yes!” she triumphed. “The light of the Waking Eye should kill them!”

She cast around herself, looking for something, anything, that she could use to carry a flame in. All of the wood was too big for her to carry easily, and probably would take too long to light. The straw would burn too fast to be effective. She couldn’t tear the cots apart.

Her eyes landed on the wooden doll in her hand.

Her heart missed a beat.

Tears rushed to her eyes.

“But Father gave me this,” she said.

She hugged the doll close, feeling the lump of it against her chest. If she held it tight enough, she could almost feel the love of her father pouring out of the doll and infusing her being. She didn’t even know if her father was safe any longer. How could she give up this last piece of him?

“And what about you?” she asked Skuld. “What will happen to you if the doll isn’t here?”

There wasn’t any answer.

How could she do it?

She looked back outside and realized two things: if she didn’t sacrifice the doll, she would lose her sister and Rorick, and the safety they promised. She also realized that, while Abagail wasn’t Dolan, she was her family, and a more intimate connection to her father than the doll was.

Fueled by the need to act and the need to get the horrible deed over with, Leona dashed to the fire, plunged the wooden dolls head into the flames and prayed that it would ignite easily.

She was in more pain than she’d ever been in her entire life. She was cold, she was wet, and she was afraid. Abagail clutched her right hand to her breast, breathing through the crippling pain of the shadow plague that just wanted to be free.

Rorick was standing now, the wound on his side bleeding profusely. She wasn’t sure that he had told her the truth. He might only think it was a cut, but it appeared to be so much more than that. He held the hammer loosely, and she wasn’t sure if he was prepared to attack, or if he was trying to draw attention away from her.

You might have to let the power go,
he’d said to her. She agreed. She might have to let the power free, but what would happen to them if she did? What would happen to Singer’s Trail if she let the power have its way? Would she open another rift? Celeste wasn’t there this time to heal it.

She looked down at her right hand, her left hand coming around to grasp her glove and pull it free. Her hand was a mass of shadows darker than the night around her. It glowed with a baneful power, one she could feel consuming her down to the very core of her being.

Abagail looked up. To her left she could see the shimmer if lavender light. Daphne was still occupied with the other darklings. Could she even kill them? Or was she just keeping them at bay?

She let her palm open up, and she stared at the surface of the skin as it began to part, a golden light shining from beneath the flesh in stark contrast to the darkness of her skin.

And then the warrior did something she’d never heard him do before. He screamed out in pain.

All fear and worry was lost. Her eyes flew up to meet the warrior, now engulfed in towering flames. He staggered closer to Rorick, and he moved out of the way of the clumsy figure. The warrior continued forward, wrapping his arms around empty space like he was trying to take Rorick with him, but his arms found the shadowy darkling, and together they tumbled to the snow, a blazing inferno.

Abagail sighed a rush of breath, relief swelling through her and taking away the debilitating pain in her hand. The golden glow was dashed from the surface of her palm, and her muscles eased as all of her worry and fear left her. She slipped the glove back on, wiggling her fingers to ease the pained muscles.

Her eyes found Leona, standing where the warrior had once been, a burning lump of something at her feet. Her sister had tears standing in her eyes, but she had that resolute look Abagail recognized so much in herself.

She refused to cry.

Abagail searched for her sword and slipped it back into its sheath. She stumbled to her sister and wrapped her tight in her arms. She half expected Leona to pull away from her, but she didn’t, she wrapped her arms around Abagail and held her tight.

Abagail looked down at the burning lump her sister had used to ignite the darkling and recognized it as Skuld. Pride swelled through her for her sister, but it was quickly dampened by remorse. She remembered what it was like having to take over all of the responsibilities of their home when her father was wounded. She remembered the day she packed away her favorite dress because it wasn’t practical, and the day she cut off her hair because it was too much a burden to keep. They had been sad days. A door closing on her childhood, another one opening on her premature adult life.

But she wouldn’t patronize her sister by making a fuss over this. Abagail hadn’t wanted people to talk to her about her hair, and she imagined Leona wouldn’t want people to talk to her about Skuld.

“Daphne’s coming back,” Rorick said. “The darklings are gone. Do you think she killed them?”

“I imagine they were scared off by the fire,” Abagail said.

“Alright,” Rorick said. “I think I need to lie down.” No sooner had he said that did Rorick collapse to the ground, the hammer falling into a puff of snow.

“What do we do?” Leona asked, falling to her knees beside Rorick. “He’s bleeding really bad.”

“I know, that darkling got him in the side, and he said it was nothing,” Abagail said. She crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her right hand away because it was starting to tingle again.

“You have to do something,” Leona said. “What about the shadow plague?” She looked up to her sister, pleading in her green eyes.

Abagail was already shaking her head. “All we can do is get him cleaned up, try to bandage the wound and hope for the best.”

“Abbie!” Leona barked at her older sister. It was a scolding note she’d never heard her sister use before. “Forget about that shadow! This is Rorick. By the Waking Eye,
do
something!”

Abagail shook her head. Leona was right. What was she thinking? If she could resist the shadow plague like she’d just done, then she could call upon it now. She was worried, she could feel her hand humming, she knew the power was working with her emotions and would answer her, but would it do what she wanted?

It’s been so destructive before!

“But, what if I let it loose and it blows a hole through him?” she wondered, coming to crouch beside Rorick and his wound where he bled out into the snow.

“He
already
has a hole in him,” Leona argued. “Plus, last night you put a shield around us, that wasn’t destructive.”

Daphne circled out of the night and landed on Rorick. She wasn’t a butterfly now, she was still in her pixie form. Her wings treaded the air lightly, and her tiny, alien-like face turned up to Abagail. The same look was mirrored in Daphne’s eyes that was in Leona’s.

“Alright,” Abagail said, resigned to their insistence and her own desire to help Rorick. “I hope this works,” she said.

“It will,” Leona said, nodding.

Abagail wanted to ask if Skuld was telling her it would work, but she didn’t see the familiar shimmer around her sister, and there was no telling if the being was really connected to the doll or not. If Skuld was in fact the doll, then Leona had destroyed her.

Abagail slipped the glove from her hand and stared at her palm. It was like it had been when she’d cast the circle around them, it glowed with a slight silver radiance, and even though her hand was still black as ebony, the light that came from her was one that calmed her nerves and made her feel like everything was going to be alright.

She let the work glove fall into the snow, and she cast her eyes up into the heavens. The snow storm had faded while the darkling burned, and now the Sleeping Eye was breaking through the clouds, bathing the clearing in moonlight. Abagail closed her eyes and tried to listen for a sign. Heimdall and Celeste had both said that cosmic bodies had their own kind of music, if she was lucky, her ears could hear it.

But they couldn’t. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t hear the moon singing like she hoped she would. It hung in the sky, cold and unyielding, allowing the faintest of light to bathe the clearing and the smoldering darklings not far from them.

The light in her palm intensified. She cast her gaze down to Rorick and the puddle of blood seeping out of him. He looked as if he were sleeping, if it wasn’t for how pale his skin was, making his hair look that much darker in contrast.

Abagail feared he was close to death, and a groan broke free of her lips. She wanted so badly for him to live. She
needed
him to live. What would she do if he didn’t?