Shadow's Edge (18 page)

Kiera stood up, a crown of thorns around her head, framing her white face. Her skin was alabaster white, her pupils red. Black robes flowed around her, moving with the red cap goblins hiding beneath. It seemed that these were her ladies-in-waiting.

“Welcome,” Kiera said, her fangs tinged with pink.

Immediately, the red caps came out from under her robes to steal a glimpse at the illusive mortal who'd intervened in their world.

A two-headed mouse as big as Doppler scampered in the shadows. I watched in horror as Kiera grabbed the animal, ripped it in half, and drank the blood from its severed halves as if from a goblet. As some of the blood dribbled down her robes, the red caps dipped their hats in the liquid, deepening the red color.

It was pretty messed up.

“Speak,” Slade hissed, elbowing me.

The goblins chattered as I began to talk. “Listen, I'm here to—” I started, my voice about four octaves too high.

Kiera held up one blood-stained hand. “I know why you're here. You will bear witness to my intentions to go to war with the Light should a resolution not be formed.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Shaman, not since our centuries-ago battle with the Fomoriians has my kingdom experienced such upheaval,” Kiera said as she swatted at the red caps, sending one flying into the black sludge-blood. The creature immediately turned into stone.

I nodded as I moved a little closer to Slade. I never thought I'd see the day when being next to Scary Wolf Man Slade would be comforting.

“You believe us, then?” Kiera examined one pointy black nail.

I really wasn't in a position to disagree. “Yes, I do. At first I didn't, but now I know there's something larger than just a civil war in the Other Realm. It's something more … powerful. Fomoriian magic,” I added. “So, I'm here to look at the ancient scrolls. I'm hoping I'll find some information about how to acquire the Four Treasures.” I spoke quickly, the words tumbling out. I hunched my shoulders, trying to cover my neck. Although I knew that baobhan sith rarely feed on humans, I didn't want my white neck skin to become too tempting to bear or something.

Kiera sat very still for a long time and I was certain we were about to become a happy hour snack. But then she stood and her black robes billowed behind her. “Come,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her. I shot a questioning look at Slade, who motioned for me to go with Kiera as she started toward a doorway to the right of the throne.

Sure, I'd love to follow the evil bloodsucker lady down the dark hallway. Good plan.

I took a few steps forward. Slade didn't move until I said, “I go, you go.”

Kiera pulled a fire torch off one of the stone walls of the chamber and pushed open a black door smeared in blood. She turned and walked through the door, blood drops plopping on the ground next to her.

Despite the seriously sick feeling in my stomach, I followed her. The path was illuminated by only fireflies and moths, whose wings glowed purple. We trailed after Kiera until we reached a fork in the tunnel and entered a cave filled with glowing moss. The moss, covered in beetles and snakes, wound around a stone altar on which lay five gilded boxes, ornately decorated. The boxes made a ring on the altar; each was no taller than a foot high and had a delicate black orchid on the front, latching it closed.

“It is what you seek,” Kiera said, pointing to the altar.

My body shaking, my neck and arteries inches from her pointy fangs, I knew that my life—literally—was in her hands. Or her fangs, more accurately. I tried to walk past her, but she grabbed my wrist and held it tight.

“Not yet, Shaman.” Kiera's eyes grew darker. Her grip on my wrist tightened like a tourniquet until my heartbeat pulsed through my arm. “You have ignored my kingdom; we've suffered due to your prejudices and predilections for the Light beings of Tara.”

Black spots started to appear before my eyes as my body trembled uncontrollably.

This is how I'm going to die.

Slade brought me here to kill me.

Kiera released my wrist and my vision returned. Panting for breath, I looked at Slade, searching for some clue as to my fate. But his face remained stony and unflinching.

“What do you want?” I gasped.

Kiera ran her tongue over her fangs and I grew woozy again. “A tithe, Shaman. A tithe for only dancing in the dawn instead of the darkness. You have denied us, but you need our help now.”

“What kind of tithe?” I whispered, feeling my feet sink into the mud floor.

Kiera looked at Slade, who turned away. She looked back at me. “Some of your life force—mortal energy—equivalent to a year of your life.”

“My Queen, no! She—” Slade started to say, but he was cut off by her stare.

I looked desperately at Slade, who shook his head as if to pardon himself from any responsibility. “I would die a whole year sooner,” I whispered weakly.

Kiera turned her head to the side in an unnatural angle. She lifted a white hand and waved it in front of me. Suddenly, the landscape changed and all around me were bloodied, dead corpses of Créatúir. A decapitated gorgon head, eyes wide as though she knew her fate, rested in the lap of a dismembered siabra. A manticore, sliced into a million pieces, black blood running like a river across my shoes. A shapeshifter, killed while in mid-transformation, his wolf's head and human body slit up the middle into two mirror images. Smoke emanated from the ground as
Créatúir
weapons lay fruitless across the landscape. Far off in the distance, I saw a moving pack of beings—Fomoriians—headed toward my neighborhood, ready to off the mortals living there. My neighbors. My family. I sunk to my knees and cried out, my arms outstretched.

There is no other way.

Suddenly, the vision disappeared and I was back in the cave with Kiera and Slade.

“Now you see. Now you know the consequences for not paying the tithe,” Kiera said, running her tongue around her lips.

“I have no other choice,” I whispered as tears fell across my cheeks. “One year of my life to find the Four Treasures. To save my world and yours. To save my family.” I held out my right wrist to Kiera.

Her dark eyes glinted as she saw the delicate wrist bones under my pale skin. She softly lifted my wrist to her face, tracing her tongue across the spiderweb pattern of blue veins.

I closed my eyes and silently asked Fiona for protection from the Beyond.

The pain was instantaneous, like a searing hot poker shoved into my wrist in two different places. The sound of bone crunching sickened me, but I didn't dare open my eyes. I felt Kiera anchored against my body, paralyzing me. I couldn't move away if I tried. Like a mosquito trapped in a spiderweb, I was helpless prey, my life hanging on the thin silver strings of mesh.

A calm came over me as I allowed her to drink my life force. A peace, almost. As though I would be happy to die right now.

But then she released me. I fell backwards into the dirt, landing hard on my back. I clutched my wrist to my chest, afraid to look up. I looked down and saw the two round holes from her fangs slowly close, the skin smooth and scar-free. As though no one would ever have to know or could know.

“Get up,” Slade said, bending down and grabbing my elbows. I allowed him to pull me to a standing position. His arm lingered protectively against my back.

Kiera's eyes were closed, her mouth curled in a tiny smile. She exhaled as though in total ecstasy, her skin glowing from stolen human life force.

“A tithe,” she said, before opening her eyes and looking at me. “You may pass.” She extended a black-robed arm toward the boxes nestled in the alcove.

Not allowing myself to contemplate what I'd just sacrificed, I walked across the dirt floor clutching my wrist, my shoes sinking into the gritty mud. As I approached the boxes, they began to glow. I released my wrist and reached out to touch a box; when I got about two inches away from it, the flower latch moved and the box sprung open.

A holographic document appeared above it, floating in front of me. I leaned forward, but all I saw was a glowing, opaque white document, no larger than a sheet of paper.

Blank.

“There's nothing on it.” I looked over at Slade. Yet as I looked back, gold writing began to appear on the page, as though written by a faraway spirit writing a grocery list. “Wait,” I whispered.

At first, the writing just looked like symbols, like that weird “wingdings” font in Microsoft Word. Yet the longer I stared at it, the more the figures began to move, condense, morph.

Until it became words. I began to read out loud.
“In the time before the time, the two realms were joined. The mortals and the Créatúir were one. One force, one race, living together. A peaceful life they—”
I turned back to Slade and Kiera. “It stopped,” I said.

I moved to the next box and held out my hand until another glowing paper floated above, hovering next to the first one.

“Yet at the dawn of the Time of Iron, this race split into two. Those who became mortal soon forgot their Créatúir ancestors and feared their Créatúir cousins, forcing them underground into the Middle Kingdom. Into the hidden Other Realm.”

I tapped the adjacent box, and the next scroll appeared.

“The mortals embraced pursuits of the mind and intellect and lost their connection with the ethereal realm, both physically and spiritually.”

I cleared my throat and continued.
“The Créatúir,
living in the ethereal realm, themselves split into two: the Light and the Dark. The Light bask in the sunlight and wind, the Dark in the shadows and moonlight.”

Finally I moved to the last box in the circle.
“The mortals, as a result of their splinter with the Créatúir, became destined to live a life of fear of darkness, for they no longer have sight in the night, and fear of heights, for they no longer have magic. The Créatúir live on in the mystical realm, separated by a mere veil from the mortals.”

I turned back to Kiera and Slade. “We were all joined at one time. Light, Dark, Créatúir, human. We are all descended from one race.” I looked back at the circle. “How come nobody knows this?” I whispered.

“Lost. Lost in the stories of the past. Lost in the disregarding of history. Lost because the modern world and the future are more important than times gone by,” Kiera said.

“But it still doesn't tell me about the Four Treasures,” I said as I watched the glowing documents flutter back into their boxes.

I noticed Slade and Kiera sharing a silent exchange.

“What?” I said.

“You did not tell her?” Kiera pointed a long finger at Slade. She bared her fangs and hissed at him as the red caps chattered beneath her robes.

Slade backed away, his pale face drawn in terror. “She would not have come otherwise. She needed to see the destruction for herself. She needed to see all of this for herself. To search for signs in the darkness. I had faith—I still have faith—that she will find the Treasures.”

“What's going on?” I said, my head snapping back and forth between them.

“The middle box—the center of the ring,” Slade said.

I looked back at the ring of boxes and saw that in the center there was a small, empty platform with a square imprint. “Is there another box somewhere?”

“Somewhere,” Kiera said. “It was stolen.” She glanced at a beetle crawling in the low dirt ceiling above her. Reaching up, she pulled its wings off and dropped it to the ground.

“What?” I said.

“We were all given tainted food. When we awoke, the box had been stolen from our realm,” Slade said, his dark eyes growing cloudy.

“Well, what was in it?” I asked, my shoes squishing further into the mud of the cave.

“The legend says that the center scroll was the most revered. The most high,” Kiera said.

“Let me guess? It tells us how to find the Four Treasures,” I said quickly.

Slade and Kiera's flat silence affirmed my assumption.

My life. I gave my life for this. For nothing.

I turned toward Slade.

“You knew this? You
knew
it wasn't here, yet you brought me there! You made me risk everything again for nothing. For nothing! I left my friends, my boyfriend, everything to come here! I gave up a year of my life, paid the tithe to the Dark! And you LET ME!” I pointed my finger in Slade's face, inches from his icy exterior. The cold began creeping down my index finger, a warning.

But I didn't care. Didn't care that Kiera's blood droplets were forming a little inkblot design on my shoes. “Take me back home!” I shrieked.

“You will find out where it is. I know you will,” Slade said, his voice slightly broken.

“Okay, so tell me. Where is it? What did it say?” I folded my arms across my chest.

“I—I don't know. Only current Créatúir Shaman can read it,” Slade repeated.

“Yeah, but didn't anyone else ever read it?” I cocked my head to the side, already knowing his answer.

“No, there wasn't ever a need,” Kiera said, waving a black-clothed arm in front of her. “History doesn't usually catch our attention until we need to learn from it. The scrolls were forgotten about, and anyone who knew what they said has been gone for many centuries.” She scraped a black fingernail against her fang, sharpening it. “But you know all about escaping the past, don't you Shaman?”

Focus, Leah. Get out of here. Lie.

“You know, I think I know where to find the box. I need to go back to my world, though, to find it,” I said, as steadily as I could muster.

“No—” Slade started to say.

I held up my hand. “Slade, I have to go back.” I didn't wait for his response before turning away. “I'm ready,” I said to Kiera. I followed her back through the damp tunnel, back to the throne room.