Gossamyr (47 page)

And so she did.

She turned and leaped again, this time snagging the alicorn with
the bag. In that moment she felt the vibrations of Enchantment. She
did not want to hold this object. It was not hers to own. Where had
gone the unicorn and the changeling?

With a deft balance to keep the alicorn teetering—without
touching it—she slipped it into the leather pouch and ran down
the steps to Ulrich. "Take it."

He shoved the pins into her hand, exchanging them for the leather
bag. Gossamyr was pulled about by a mourning cry from her father. His
body plummeted, falling straight backward, arms still out at his
sides. Wings drained of life were useless against the fall.

The Red Lady, unloosed from her deadly kiss, staggered and coiled
into a fix of squirming limbs. She moaned with such pleasure Gossamyr
felt she witnessed a private act.

"Shinn!"

"No."

She wrestled against Ulrich's attempts to hold her back.

"This is your chance," the soul shepherd pleaded. "She
is in a wicked sort of sexual thrall. Take her out!"

A glance to Shinn. He lay perfectly still. Wings flattened upon
the cold marble. The fetch landed his forehead. Dead?

"No," Gossamyr moaned in a rabbity cry.

And in the next instant her fingers clenched about the silver
pins. Gathering the dozen long needles with both hands, she pointed
them outward and rushed the writhing succubus. Racked with a pleasure
most wicked, the Red Lady danced and sighed along the wall, clinging
and undulating against the essences. Viscous fluids splattered her
arms and neck and face as her movements burst the struggling
essences.

Gossamyr wielded the pins overhead and, just as the Red Lady's arm
whipped backward, twisting her chest up and high in a spasm of
pleasure, Gossamyr drove the weapons into her chest. Silver pin to
faery flesh. Pins slid freely through ribs, others, Gossamyr had to
shove hard to pierce the resistant bone cage.

The force of the act blasted Gossamyr backward. Flung unfettered
and uncontrollably, she landed Ulrich's body. The two slumped to the
floor in a tangle of limbs.

Maniacal wails filled the room. The succubus's body shivered upon
the wall as if an essence for ever pinned between the Celestial and
the Infernal.

"Will she die?" Ulrich whispered over Gossamyr's
shoulder.

The succubus spat out oaths tinged with the Red and then ceased
movement. Ichor poured from her chest, glistening ooze dripping from
the heavy iron balls that tipped the pins. Her head slumped, folding
onto her bosom.

And the wall of essences stopped. All became quiet.

Save the glimmer parting Shinn's chest. A brilliant essence of
violet and emerald emerged and severed from the Faery lord's body.

"No, go back!" Gossamyr lunged to her father's side. She
reached for the escaping essence, then paused to consider. Should she
touch it? She did not want to risk a revenant. Carefully, she placed
her palms above the essence to shield it from rising any higher. The
cloying aroma of hyacinth set loose tears. "What should I do,
Ulrich? I cannot put it back in the body."

"Let it go!"

"No!" Gossamyr clasped the essence to her body and felt
it seep into her clothing, through her flesh and into her body. "Oh!"

"Hades," Ulrich moaned.

In the next instant the revenant's bony fingers reached out from
Shinn's chest and sprang, fully formed into the room. Heart beating
heavily, Gossamyr knew then she should have allowed the essence to
leave of its own. She had prevented the final
twinclian.

Now she held her father's essence within her. She could feel it
pressing inside, filling and glowing. It sought freedom. From a
species so foreign?

The revenant spread out its wings. A shriek rattled Gossamyr's
concentration. It slapped one wing back against the wall, crushing
several stilled essences in a spray that showered distorted rainbows
upon the Red Lady's bowed head. Shinn's revenant—it sought an
essence to achieve the final
twinclian.
It would be off to
Faery!

Gossamyr reminded herself it was not Shinn, but a creature. Only
when united with the essence would it become Turiau de Wintershinn,
lord of Glamoursiege. Her father.

The revenant's skull bobbed, searching the room. Hollow red eyes
focused first on Ulrich, then Gossamyr. Clutching her chest,
Gossamyr's terror mixed with the strange filling sensation that
glimmered throughout her being. A fée essence cleaved to her
insides. Her
mortal
insides. She could gauge the strength
growing in her muscles. Her thoughts wavered, parting to let in
another. Shinn inhabited her. Though her mind remained her own she
experienced an overwhelming calm. Of being touched by a being that
could only communicate love. Faery, so rich and luscious. Shinn's
final gift to her—light.

She began to rise, floating up from the floor.

The revenant slashed out with a long, clawed hand, missing
Gossamyr's face by a breath. But she did not dodge. Still rising,
shoulders straight, she hung before the creature, ready. Dropping the
two remaining pins, they landed in a clatter.

"Gossamyr, no!" Ulrich cried. "You are...do not
sacrifice!"

Delicious warmth seeped throughout her. Shinn would protect her.
She believed.

Yes, Father, I do belong—in your heart.

"Take the essence if you can," she defied the shrieking
revenant.

"No!"

She ignored Ulrich's protest. If she did not do this all of Faery
would suffer.

"I love you, Shinn," she murmured. The vibrations of her
voice echoed in her bones and the glowing, shimmering essence inside
her twitched in response. "This is for you!"

Stretching out her arms wide, Gossamyr lifted her chest, opening
herself completely to the oncoming attack. A macabre grin cracked the
jaw of the skull that flew toward her. Fingers of sharp bone moved
through her ribs. The pain was real, tearing her open and parting her
chest. All she could do was gasp as the revenant, its hand embedded
deep within her, held her suspended before the wall of stilled
essences.

To her right the Red Lady still shivered and fought against death.

Ichor glimmered in a stream from her mouth. And peaceful upon the
bed lay one she'd loved, gone to the Celestial.

The hand inside her twisted and began to probe, to summon and
gather.

Gossamyr let out a yowl that birthed from a mortal midnight that
saw her stolen from her cradle and secreted away to Faery.

Verity d'Ange...

...this day we baptize you in the name of our Lord.

She is so precious. Do you like your little sister, Seraphim?

She's stinky.

Verity is ours to love...bless us all.

The shimmering feeling began to subside, to give way from her
extremities, pulling, balling and forming into a central mass.
Gossamyr felt the revenant's bony fingers curl and scrape against her
spine to clasp. In that moment she looked up into the fathomless red
eyes of the skull and saw the circumference of the pupils begin to
fill with violet. Faery seeped back into the revenant. Shinn
returned.

And in his wake, Verity d'Ange rose up from the remnants of
Enchantment.

Lifted high, her feet dangling above marble, Gossamyr thought the
beast to fling her across the room—but instead it lunged toward
the bed. Gently—the hand still within her chest—it laid
her upon the red sheets beside Avenall.

As the revenant hand withdrew, Gossamyr groped at the opening in
her chest. Everything moved slowly, lengthening the pain. Bones moved
out from her body, the creature, not Shinn. And grasped in the
skeletal hand the violet and emerald essence.

When the essence pulled free from her body, it brightened and
expanded and began to overtake the revenant. Enthralled in a tornado
of the brilliant violet and emerald essence, the revenant spun,
moving across the room like a windstorm. Past Ulrich, who clung to
the bedpost, and above Shinn's empty body.

Gossamyr, eyes fixed to the vision, clutched her chest. The gown
had been rendered wide, but beneath, her flesh bore not a mark. A
deep inhale renewed her vigor.

She pushed up to the edge of the bed just as the essence devoured
the revenant and twirled into a long thin beam. Ulrich's touch
stopped her from rushing forward.

The essence poured into Shinn's prone body, covering the Faery
lord over with its glimmer. The fetch, fixed to his forehead,
fluttered its wings and took to flight. And then, the glimmer
dissipated, leaving the dead fée in its wake.

Tears coating her cheek, Gossamyr stepped over to her father's
body. "You sacrificed for me." And she pressed her head
against his gut and began to cry. She had witnessed his final
twinclian.

"Gossamyr!"

At Ulrich's cry, she looked up from Shinn's body. There, pinned to
the wall of exhausted essences, the Red Lady's essence began to
emerge from the pinnacle of her skull. A dark crimson thing oozed
slowly into the atmosphere to hover above its mistress's head.
Taunting, as only the succubus could.

"Shall I get it?" Ulrich wondered from over her
shoulder. "I'll take your staff and smash—"

"No." She reached for Ulrich's hand and turned to sit at
the edge of the marble steps. "Just...witness."

The blood-red essence remained above her head for so long Gossamyr
thought the revenant might climb out and smash the thing itself. But
suddenly the red globule popped.

"Dragon piss," Gossamyr muttered. Feeling every muscle
in her body tense she prepared.

"The revenant?" Ulrich said.

"Soon," she called. "Stand back!"

Approaching the Red Lady's body, Gossamyr stood over the limp heap
of white velvet speckled with gobs of the shattered red essence.
"Have at me," she whispered. "This is what I've come
for."

It did not claw its way out from the body. No, this revenant
shrieked and flew from the cage of bones as if shot out from a
cannon. It touched the ceiling of the collection room, floated
momentarily, its red eyes surveying the floor, and then dived.

This one was not a skeletal clatter of bones. This revenant was
fleshed with red muscle and long glinting claws. A result of a
succubus, or that of a succubus's dabbling with magic?

It mattered not.

Gossamyr swung her body in a circle, drawing the staff straight
out. Connection thrust her against the wall of essences. Cold goo
oozed over her shoulder. A shriek to raise the dead pierced her ear.
The revenant slashed the wall. Its claws cried to the Infernal as
they destroyed essences and neared Gossamyr's face.

Leaping forward, Gossamyr gripped the waist of the creature. It
flew high with her clinging and kicking at the muscular legs. A shake
released her hold.

Falling, she let out a cry. "For Glamoursiege!"

Her body hit marble. Briefly her sight blackened. She lifted her
hand, still clutching the half staff. It connected with something
solid.

The revenant cried out and the staff jiggled in her hand. Gripping
it with both hands, Gossamyr wrestled with the speared revenant.
Claws hissed through the air and the foul stench of decay spewed over
all.

"The alicorn, Ulrich!"

Releasing the staff, Gossamyr rolled on her side. She slid
ungracefully down the two marble stairs. Behind her the revenant
banged its shoulder against the wall as it struggled with the staff
fixed in its chest.

Sliding to a stop at Ulrich's foot, Gossamyr felt the alicorn slap
into her palm. "Get back!" She rolled to her back and aimed
the alicorn toward the revenant.

Not a glimmer of Enchantment beamed from the horn.

The revenant, aware now, tilted its head curiously.

"Ulrich, I think I need some magic to destroy this beast!"

"I'm not sure—"

"Grab my hand!" She scrambled backward and when she hit
Ulrich's leg, she leaped to her feet. It was wrong to include Ulrich
when the most possible outcome could be his death. But there was
little choice—this revenant had been forged of both Enchantment
and magic.

The revenant lunged for her.

Ulrich slapped his palm to hers.

Believe, Gossamyr thought to herself. And then she shouted to
Ulrich, "You must believe!"

The wind of the revenant's savage growl bruised her face. Staring
at slimy maws, Gossamyr lifted the alicorn and drove it up through
the revenant's throat. The tip emerged at the top of its skull. She
felt little resistance. But a spark of dust sifted from the alicorn's
tip and floated over the revenant.

Keeping hold of the alicorn, Gossamyr shoved Ulrich behind her but
kept his hand in hers. She could feel it. His truth. His belief
flowing through her arms and out her other arm to focus in the
alicorn.

A brilliant crackle of bone and muscle exploded before her. No
glimmer. Not a single glint. Particles of bone clattered to the
marble floor.

And it was done.

"That," Ulrich gasped over her shoulder, "left a
mark."

"We're safe. Circelie Sangreul of Rougethorn has had the
final
twinclian."

With a shimmering flight over their heads, the fetch landed
Gossamyr's forehead. So brief the touch, and yet, in that moment she
saw a flash of the time she had cried three days. And following,
Mince storing her tears away in a crystal vase, where they hardened
and sparkled like quartz. That was all she saw before the fetch
alighted and
twinclianed.

Dominique entered, the unicorn in tow. The changeling took in the
destruction, glancing to the body of Avenall, and sneering at sight
of the Red Lady, yet pinned to the wall. Red had begun to trickle
from the pinprick marks around her left eye. Finally Dominique's eyes
fell upon Shinn.

"Your father?" he said as he knelt beside the Faery
lord. "I am sorry."