On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (38 page)

It was a sad couple of days as they all prepared to leave in their separate directions. Joya had come to think of Grace as part of her family, even if at times she hadn’t really cared for the older lady. Now that they were preparing to leave, it hit her hard how much she, Jovian, and Angelica had lost.

They sat in the common room of their shared suite, eating dinner. Rather, they were supposed to be eating dinner, but Joya couldn’t focus on the food. Her stomach was a mess of nerves and emotions about their coming travel. They had been through a lot of things together, this war being the most dangerous, but they had pulled through. But when Joya thought of what was to come — the angelic army they would all face, and Arael at the end of it — Joya just wanted to throw up.

How are we supposed to survive?
she wondered. She couldn’t keep her gaze from lingering on her brother and sister. They were joined together by a bond bestowed upon them at their births by their mother. Sylvie still coursed in their veins; her memories still dwelled in their heads. They were better equipped for this than she was.

Cianna even had the necklace now, and she was full angel. What did Joya have?

She closed her eyes and schooled her thoughts. She was a Realm Guardian, a sorceress, and these thoughts shouldn’t be plaguing her now. She was strong in wyrd, and swift in action. She would be fine.

But part of her knew she was going to her death.

She looked across the table at Angelica, sitting there chewing on her food in a manner that wasn’t like Angelica at all. She took one bite at a time, instead of diving into her plate. That was the only indication Joya had that Angelica was nervous.

Jovian hadn’t even made the attempt to eat. He had pushed his plate away, and now sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his feet propped up on the coffee table between the couches. Maeven was at his side, eating regularly, as if nothing was happening, no dark future was looming before them. Joya wished she could be as calm as him. He kept casting glances at Jovian, though, and Joya knew he was worried.

She wanted to stay up all night, sitting beside Grace, smelling the tobacco that billowed in tufts of smoke out of the end of her long pipe. She wanted to imprint as much of the woman’s face in her mind as she could, in case she never saw her again. But the longer she sat up, the longer she worried about what was coming, the worst her stomach got.

Finally she excused herself for the night. She wrapped her arms around Grace and took a deep breath of the crone’s rose and tobacco-scented hair. Joya kissed Grace on her withered cheek, marveling at how much it felt like wax.

Grace locked eyes with her, and Joya stared into the older lady’s watery blue gaze.

“Sleep now, child,” Grace told her, patting her cheek. “You need your rest.”

Joya nodded and went to bed, but sleep evaded her, and before she knew it the sun was rising in the east, painting the tips of the snow-capped mountains in pink and honeyed-yellow warmth.

What Now?

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FLIP THE PAGE FOR A PREVIEW OF BOOK 6: THE TURQUOISE TOWER

Steuben rushed into the house, worry etched in every line of his dark face. “Mr. Daydren, you need to come look at this,” he said, holding the door of the plantation house open with one leg.

“What is it now?” Garrett Daydren mumbled, following the young man out of the house and down the knoll to the sun-bathed pastures beyond.

“Maple just finished birthing, and . . . you just have to see this.” The younger man vaulted the wooden fence and dashed some hundred yards to where Garrett could barely see the white lump of the goat, lying on her side in the swaying hay.

Being older than Steuben, Garrett wasn’t able to jump over the fence as Steuben had, so he climbed over, groaning against the pain it caused his hips. Why couldn’t he have used the gate? Garrett frowned.

“What is this about?” Garrett asked. Just last week they had a problem with all of the milk from their cows coming out of the udders rancid. He was still waiting for that to stop. In all of his time working the family farm, he had never known anything like that to happen.

He huffed his way to the goat and followed Steuben’s stare to the twisted form on the ground. At first all he saw was a stillborn baby goat lying in the hay, covered in blood and mucus.

“Dear Goddess,” Garrett whispered, hand going to his mouth. His eyes couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. Or rather, his mind couldn’t fully comprehend it. Not one gray head and pink nose, but two. The baby goat had an extra neck, and an extra head. The second one looked oddly human, with a shorter snout, smaller, lidless eyes, and a wicked human grin on its lips. The skin around the skull was shrunken down, tight to the bone, giving it a withered, rotten appearance.

He couldn’t help it — he’d never thought of himself as a weak man, but in that moment Garrett averted his eyes. Only then did he see that the baby didn’t have a lower half like most goats. Its midsection gave way to scarlet red scales, which were nearly lost in the blood oozing from its mother. He squinted, crouching down to see the thing closer; he couldn’t think of this malformed being as a baby goat.

“Is it being eaten?” Garrett asked. Reuben couldn’t answer and instead shook his head. Likely Garrett wouldn’t have believed the other man if he had told him. With the tip of his boot he moved the baby goat. The corpse slopped to the side, boneless. But no, it wasn’t being eaten by a snake, it was part snake. “How in the Realms does this happen?” he wondered, taking an involuntary step back.

He’d seen enough. He turned away from the dead form of Maple and her misshapen, stillborn baby.

What was happening to his farm?

“Any news from the Grant Farm or Siclen Plantation, about whether they’re having any issues?” Steuben asked.

Garrett shook his head. “I haven’t gotten word back yet.” With the debacle of spoiled milk coming from the cows, Garrett had thought it might be something in the soil, or maybe a sickness the cows were catching. He had written his nearest farming neighbors, but hadn’t heard back yet what was going on.

But before he could think further on what to do, or what might even be happening, a scream split the still morning, shivering across his skin. It was coming from the barn.

“Strange things are happening in the mountains just west of here,” Steuben told him, as they rushed for the barn. “And it’s getting worse here.”

“Steu, there’s nothing west of here but the Barrier Mountains,” Garrett scowled. His farm was on the western-most reaches of the Realm of Water. Beyond his lands were nothing but treacherous mountains. To think anything could be within them other than animals was absurd.

Together they entered the cool darkness of the barn.

“No, in the mountains,” Steuben said, leading him down a hall to where they’d heard the scream come from. There was all kinds of commotion now, buckets slamming, raised voices, and panicked farm hands. Garrett was nearly knocked over as one young woman brushed past him, her face an unreadable mask of horror, her fist clamped over her mouth.

Garrett frowned. If Steuben had mentioned the rumors of what was happening in the mountains to him just a week ago, he would have scoffed. But he’d never known milk to go rancid in a cow’s udders, nor what he’d just witnessed with the baby goat. Now he was susceptible to believe any bit of heathen rumor.

The Turquoise Tower, Garrett thought. That’s what Steuben was speaking of. Everyone was talking about it now, as if it were something that actually existed. He didn’t believe it for a minute.

He pushed through the gathered farm hands to where they congregated around one cow, Margie, lying on her side, breathing labored. Garrett let out a moan. This was his late wife’s favorite cow. On shaky legs he neared the cow. Someone had tipped over the wooden bucket of milk in their haste to be away from the scene, spilling the foul milk over the ground. It ran in white clumps in a way he hadn’t seen before now. There hadn’t been lumps of rotten milk in the udders before.

And what’s that? He thought, kneeling beside the cow to inspect one of her tits. Is that a worm? Sure enough, wriggling out of Margie’s tit was a thin, white worm. As he inspected the udder he could see that it was moving, roiling underneath as if it was full of the worms.

He looked at the milk and realized now that it was rife with worms, slithering around the floor, seeking purchase in the cow once more. Margie turned a large black eye up to Garrett, begging him to help her, save her from the pain and horror inside of her own body.

“Steuben, go get my axe,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on Margie.

As Steuben turned to leave, the udder shuddered and split down the center, spilling milk, blood, and thousands of the white worms out onto the hard dirt floor. Garrett jumped away from Margie’s flailing feet as her pain-filled mewling swelled through the air.

The farmhands backed away from the mass of worms spilling over the ground, slithering toward all of them.

“Don’t let them touch you!” Ray, one of the older farmhands declared. Garrett frowned, but figured that was sound advice.

The barn broke into panic, and Garrett was knocked into a wall as farmhands and servants alike rushed from the milking room. He knocked his head against the wall and staggered forward, slipping on curdled milk and landing on Margie, who had now fallen still, dead.

He could feel the worms on him, slipping up his pant leg, and burrowing into his flesh like tongues of fire. Garret could feel the teeth of the worms — and he hadn’t even known they had teeth, but he could feel the bites as they ate tunnels into his flesh and slipped into his bloodstream.

Up his body they went, and he could feel them, somehow, swimming through his blood, up his legs, through his stomach, into his heart, where they were pumped back out in a rush of blood.

When the first worm reached his brain, Garrett knew the blackness of death.

Steuben watched everyone fleeing the barn; he didn’t know what was happening. He raced back in with his master’s axe, ready to stand by his side while he ended Margie’s life, even if all of those cowards had fled. But what he saw when he stepped into the room was something he wasn’t prepared to handle.

Garrett lay on the cow, his clothes soaked with blood and pungent milk. At first he didn’t think there was anything wrong. Garrett had been attached to the cow since Ruby had died last year. It had been her favorite cow. Most likely Garrett was just overcome with emotion, knowing what he had to do, knowing that he had to kill the cow.

But then he saw more blood, thick like syrup and so red it was almost black, ooze out from under his master’s body, mingling with the milk, turning it pink save for the curdles, which looked now like white stones in a sea of blood.

“Garrett?” Steuben said, stepping forward hesitantly.

Garrett rose up and turned toward Steuben. He took one labored step toward his farm manager and reached for him. Steuben held up the axe, handing it to his master, not seeing the emptiness on Garrett’s face, or the blood gushing out of his mouth as the master of the plantation gnawed on something.