mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (29 page)

It had closed.

Fear lanced him, acid in his veins, and he stumbled back and looked at the ice wall. An image had appeared on the ice. The portal was showing him a shadow of where it had gone. A great arid plain, the dirt a dull tan and the sky a brilliant cobalt. In the distance, a steam locomotive hurtled by on metal tracks. 

They’d taken her to the past. American West, mid-nineteenth century from the looks of the train. That style of locomotive hadn’t been in use in over a hundred years. 

A flash of white in the image caught his eye. Aurora was being dragged toward another portal, which glimmered in the distance, standing out starkly against the brown dirt in front of the train. The souls parted just long enough for him to see her face, strained with struggle and her eyes wild with fear. 

What the hell? For some reason, the souls were dragging her
through
the past. He’d have to timewalk to get to her.

He shut his eyes and pictured the place that the image on the ice showed him. The aether embraced him with its cold grip.

The deafening roar of the steam engine alerted him to his arrival. He caught sight of the souls and Aurora. A second later, they’d dragged her through the other portal. Fear made his heart drop and he hurtled toward the spot from where she’d disappeared. Where the hell had she gone? The air shimmered, once again the projected image of where the portal had gone. A desert. Pyramids rose from the bank of a great river, each sitting on their own small harbor, people swarming them like ants, hauling stones and building supplies. Ancient Egypt.

He focused on the place and timewalked there. When he opened his eyes, the sun nearly blinded him. The heat was stifling, but he ignored it and searched the scene before him. In the distance, almost hidden behind a partially constructed pyramid, the air shimmered white.

The souls. He raced after them, fear spurring him on. Aurora was dragged through the portal just before he reached her. 

“Fuck!” Why the hell were they doing this? He searched the image for his next destination. Edinburgh. Eighteenth century. Thick gray smoke snaked around tall brick buildings. A fire raged.

Aurora was in there.

He timewalked, choking on the smoke as soon as he arrived.

Frantically, he searched the scene. People screamed and poured out of buildings, running down the congested streets. Horses kicked at the air as they tried to break their leads. The building to his left creaked and groaned beneath the weight of brick no longer supported by wooden beams.

Where the hell was she?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Aurora slammed into a wall of ice. Her shoulder screamed with pain as she collapsed to the cold ground. Mouse yowled. She scrambled to her feet and glanced around wildly. The souls that had grabbed her had thrown her into a little cell. Mouse was in a corner, arching her back and hissing at the wooden door set into one of the ice walls. 

Blue and cold everywhere.

“Felix! Esha!” she yelled.

“Here!” Esha’s voice echoed as if from far away. “I’m in some damned ice cage.”

“Esha!” Warren roared. “Are you all right?”

“Alive!” she screamed.

“Sylvi!” Loki’s voice.

“I’m fine!” Her voice was weaker than the rest. “Still bleeding, but fine.”

“Felix!” Aurora yelled again. No answer. 

“What the hell—”

“Where are—”

The voices cut off when the door to Aurora’s cell swung open. Mouse launched herself at the intruder, but was blasted backward by a ray of power. She turned herself to smoke just before she would have hit the ice wall and zoomed down to join Aurora.

The Seer walked into the room, her eyes cunning and calm. Her hair was a wild mess around her head and her dirty gown dragged on the ice, but her face was serene. It was a creepy combination.

“Welcome,” she said.

“Where’s Felix?” Aurora demanded.

The Seer shut the door behind her. “In due time.”

Aurora growled, then gathered her magic into herself and prepared to fling it outward at the Seer in a blast of deadly flame. That it might melt the glacier didn’t faze her. She was too angry.

But nothing came.

“Oh, powers not working?” the Seer asked.

Aurora snarled. She wasn’t empty on power. She’d feel it.

“The cell is enchanted,” the Seer said. “Not as well as my old tower and therefore not well enough to subdue Felix’s wolf—hence one of the reasons he’s not here—but well enough to dampen your ability and keep you from aetherwalking away.”

“What do you want?”

At her side, Mouse hissed. The Seer’s creepy little demon hissed back, but kept behind the Seer’s legs.

“You’re clever. You’ve probably figured out what I want.”

“You want Felix’s power to bring your evil sisters back.”

“They’re no more evil than you are.” The Seer swept around the cell, circling Aurora. “I admired you so, you know. Back then.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“When you were stealing souls in the seventeenth century, you were quite the legend in certain circles. Not amongst the upstanding citizens at the university, of course, else they’d have caught you sooner. But amongst the rest of us? Those who wanted more power than we were born with? You were quite the rock star. The soulceress with the ability to steal souls, and therefore increase her power exponentially.”

“At the expense of my mind.”

The Seer waved her hand, her black eyes dismissive. “What’s a little sanity when one has limitless power?”

“Uh, everything, you fucking idiot.”

“Careful, I hold your love’s sanity in my hands. You don’t want to piss me off, or he’ll lose it.”

Fear and confusion streaked through Aurora. “What?”

The Seer turned gracefully toward one wall and swept out her hand. An image appeared on the wall, flickering over the blue ice. The deck of an ancient ship. Some kind of massive wooden ship with at least eight sails. It looked vaguely Asian. Warships attacked it from a distance. Confused, Aurora’s eyes flickered from one end of the long barge to the other.

There! Felix stood near one end, his gaze searching the rest of the ship. He sprinted toward a ghostly apparition in the middle. Souls? 

They disappeared. Felix fell to his knees and roared in pain. A second later, a shimmery image appeared in front of him. He stood and looked at it. Another scene, but she couldn’t make it out. A second later, he disappeared.

The scene on her cell’s ice wall changed. He was on a medieval battlefield. Horses in armor carrying heavily clad knights thundered across a muddy field. Infantry followed. Aurora watched, horrified, as Felix repeated the same search, run, roar in abject pain, then disappear act as before.

The scene changed again. An ancient Roman city, its white-columned buildings reaching toward a blue sky.

“What’s going on?” she asked the Seer. She had no idea, but whatever it was made fear clog her throat. This was something terribly evil.

“Felix is looking for you. He knows you’ve been captured by my souls and that they’re dragging you through time. He’ll keep timewalking until he finds you.”

“He’s got to know it’s not true.”

“Why? It looks real. And I’ll admit, I’ve toyed with his mind a bit. It’s very, very real to him. He’s chased you across at least two dozen centuries by now.”

“Two dozen?” Cold sweat broke out on her skin. “But what about his mind? A timewalker can’t abuse his power. Too much time travel and his mind will break!”

A fake grimace of sympathy crossed the Seer’s face. “Oh, that is a concern, isn’t it?”

Aurora threw herself at the Seer. Before she could land a punch, the Seer knocked her back with a ball of flame. Aurora was thrown against the ice wall. The smell of burning hair filled her nose. Ice-cold water seeped around her from where the wall had melted. It froze almost immediately. 

Aurora pried herself away from the ice. Frigid air brushed against her bare calves and back where her clothes had torn away.

“Why the hell are you doing this?” Aurora demanded.

“I wanted his soul so that I could have his timewalking ability to save my sisters. We have some lovely plans for this abandoned soulceress city, you see. But I can’t cut it out of him because of that damned wolf of his. If my tower hadn’t been destroyed, I could have used that to contain his wolf. That place was imbued with a rare magic that could contain even a wulver’s soul. As it is, I’m at a disadvantage. I have to
convince
him to help me.” She grimaced at the idea. “But he won’t.”

“No shit.”

“The only person he will help is you. I’d love to make him watch me torture you until he agrees to do as I ask, but that wolf of his...” She shook her head. “You’re his mate. It would likely attack me for hurting you. So, I have to convince you to ask him to help me. He’ll do it for you. Especially if you convince him that I’m going to kill you otherwise.”

Aurora’s gaze darted back to the wall that played the images of Felix. He was standing near a mammoth now. People in animal skins circled the great beast as Felix ran past them, hurtling after a ghostly apparition of souls that he believed carried her body.

Dark horror rose within her, choking her. “You’re going to make me watch him lose his mind as he races after me through time.”

The Seer shrugged. “You know, he hasn’t even hesitated. He knows what the price is. But he truly believes that you’re being spirited off. I have to say, I’m quite impressed with my own spell.”

Her sister and friends were all locked in this ice dungeon with her. She wasn’t even sure if they were still in Iceland. There was no one to come get them. 

“If I do this, what happens to me?” she asked.

“Oh, you’ll die.” The Seer frowned. “I still want the rest of your soul, and once we have it, we’ll have to kill you. Otherwise, you’d try to get it back. But at least you’ll be able to save Felix. And as a bonus, maybe I’ll even throw in your sister and the rest of the rabble.”

Aurora sat on the ice, stunned. Again, she tried to gather her power into herself to attack the Seer, but it was useless. Her friends had been silenced as well. A spell? Death?

No, she’d have felt her sister’s death. But there was no way to guarantee that the Seer would let any of them live. Her power was so strong, no doubt fueled by hundreds of stolen souls, that they couldn’t fight her. Not as long as they were in these ice prisons. 

And what would the Seer do once she and her sisters had the rest of her soul? There’d be four of them with immense power. They could steal thousands of souls. She’d said they had plans for the old soulceress city. With that as their fortress, they’d be unbeatable.

“I need a minute to decide,” she said, her voice dull.

“You don’t have long.” The Seer gestured at the wall, where Felix raced across another ancient battlefield. People with their skin painted blue surrounded him. 

Aurora’s mind raced. They were trapped, their powers extinguished. Sylvi was bleeding and Felix was losing his mind. If she cooperated with the Seer, there was nothing to keep her from killing them all when it was done.

“Can you give me a minute? Alone?” she asked, trying to hold back tears.

“Just agree. You’re trapped. You have no choice. You know, I can always kill your sister as some incentive.”

“Just give me a minute!” she cried.

“Fine. You have five. Remember, Felix timewalks every minute or so.” She swept out of the room and slammed the door.

Aurora collapsed against the ice, her heart pounding and tears finally spilling from her eyes. She blinked them away and they froze on her eyelids.

Think, think, think. 

She couldn’t use her magic. She couldn’t aetherwalk. All she could do was agree.

Mouse climbed onto her lap and curled up. Aurora drew the comforting presence toward her, curling her fingers into the little cat’s fur.

“What are we going to do, Mouse? She’ll kill us all after she steals the rest of my soul.”

The rest of my soul.
The words echoed in her head, spurring on a horrifying idea. The thought made her shudder, her skin crawling with fear.

But it was the only way to get rid of the Seer. To protect Felix and her sister and even Mouse. It might not work, but it was so horrible that it probably would.

She had to get it over with.

Aurora squeezed her eyes shut and focused inward, on her soul. She visualized the parts that were still tied to Felix’s and carefully separated them, severing any tie she’d created when she’d attached her soul to his in order to timewalk with him to the present. It had felt so good to stay bound to him that she hadn’t cut the tie. Now she had to. Emptiness yawned within her, the familiar desire to steal souls returning. 

She looked down at Mouse, who gazed up at her with yellow eyes. This would be far worse. Like tearing off a limb. But it would be better than dragging Mouse back to hell. Esha would take care of her.

She hugged the cat, breathing deeply of her warm fur, then reached inside her and tore the cat’s soul away from her own. Mouse yowled at the loss of connection, lunging at Aurora’s chest and trying to curl into her.