Soulceress (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 2) (5 page)

Confirmed that the baby was Avera’s, he clutched it to his chest and sprinted across the back side of the square, away from the villagers who screamed and cried over the bodies of their loved ones. They’d stop him if they caught him stealing the witch’s child. He had only one chance to get it to safety.
 

When he reached the quiet of the forest that surrounded the village, he stopped, the breath heaving in and out of his lungs as the infant cried.
 

What the hell was he to do now? He had a day-old infant. Nay, maybe hours old. It would die if he didn’t find a wet nurse. It would die if anyone knew the identity of its mother.

Should it die? Had Avera been evil? Was this child?

He looked down into the face of the newborn. He had no idea. But he couldn’t hand it over to its death without knowing. So he took it to the port, a place large enough that he found a poor woman to nurse the baby.
 

After arranging payment, he left the woman’s humble home and set out onto the street of the port. He would find the sister and turn over the babe. He stopped in his tracks. Could he trust the sister, or was she a witch too? She had been fierce when he’d met her, her eyes flashing black like Avera’s. And, witch or no, how the hell would he even find her? He had no idea where she lived.
 

He spun on his heel in the middle of the crowded little street, miserable and lost. The babe had a father in the New World, he remembered. It was the only thing that would work.

He ran to the docks and was relieved to find that Avera’s ship had not yet sailed. A quick conversation revealed that it would sail the next morning. This was safest. The sister couldn’t be trusted. He would find a wet nurse to travel with the babe and get it out of Scotland. It wasn’t safe here, and though life in the New World was uncertain, it was better than a place where the babe with strange amber eyes would be hunted.
 

It took the full night to find a nurse to go with the babe, and nearly the entirety of his wealth, little as it was. He watched the ship until it was but a pinprick in the distance, then set off along the forest road to his village.

He was nearly home when he came upon the woman in the forest. His steps stuttered, then stopped. She stood twenty feet away, golden and light, her shining blonde hair and amber eyes bright in the dimming light.

“Warren.” Her voice belied the lightness of her being. It was dark and heavy and her eyes changed to match. “You are called Warren, I have learned. I am Aurora.”

He said nothing and reached for his sword.

She laughed, a crazed sound, and her eyes blackened to coal. “That won’t help you.”

“I tried to save her.” She had some kind of inexplicable power. Powers she’d spoken of with her mother in the forest when he’d met her.

“You let her die.” Pain twisted her face as tears spilled down her cheeks. “It was your job to protect her when she couldn’t protect herself. The baby sapped her power, and she relied on you! We trusted you!”

He flinched at the volume of her scream, and the pain in it. Her golden hair whipped around her head, borne on that unnatural wind that had surrounded Avera when she’d worked her magic. Two great oaks that stood behind Aurora cracked down the middle and toppled over. The ground trembled beneath his feet.
 

“This isn’t possible,” he said, shaking his head.

“Oh, but it is. My mother forbade me to collect the power of souls for fear it would draw the attention of bloodthirsty mortals. But she is dead, and I have no need of her rules!” She flung her arm out and more trees toppled. “I’ve killed those who burned her, and I shall kill you too. You turned my mother over to those beasts!”

Rage welled dark within him. “Turned her over? I killed my kin to protect her!”

“Lies!” she screamed. Her eyes were black and crazed. She trembled, from grief or from the power raging through her, he couldn’t tell. “Perhaps I should burn what you love!”

“No!” Warren gripped his sword and stepped forward, but she’d already thrown out an arm and a jet of fire shot from her fingertips. It licked at the damp underbrush, igniting so quickly that it was clearly propelled by evil.

He lunged back as the fire roared high and hot, devouring the land and charging in the direction of his village.
 

Nay.
He’d already killed his family. Not his village. Not because of him.
 

“Doona do this!” he yelled, now separated from Aurora by a wall of fire. He could see her through the flames, tears streaking down her face and her eyes black with madness and rage.
 

“Anything! I’ll give you anything!” he yelled.

“You have nothing I want!” she screamed, and waved her arm again. The fire shot hotter and higher, and he fell to his knees.
 

“Anything!” The smoke was choking his lungs and burning his eyes. Had it reached the village yet?

It felt like an eon, trapped in the heat with visions of his village burning, but eventually her voice carried, dark and powerful, across the flames. “Your soul. You’ll give me your soul.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Warren jerked out of the trance into which he’d fallen, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The taste of smoke lingered, now only a memory but too real for his sanity. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and looked around the room.

He was still seated on the floor of his office in the quiet corner by the window. He used it for meditating when the memories of the past became too much, and although it normally cleared his mind and helped him find a bit of quiet, in this case it had sucked him back into his nightmares.

He heaved out a breath and stood. Perhaps he’d drifted off. It was still early and he hadn’t slept well after the encounter with Esha, but he’d never before fallen asleep sitting up. Hell, he might be losing his mind as Aurora had. More likely, Aurora’s near release was just dredging up the things he’d tried to pack away.
 

He was a soulless monster. Neither mortal nor Mythean. Mytheans were born to be immortals on earth, with varied powers. Only decapitation or grievous magic could kill their bodies and send their souls to an afterworld. But he was an aberration. A Mythean with no soul and no humanity. Without his soul to take him to an afterworld, he could not die. To many, it would be a blessing. To him, it was a curse.

The university had invited him to join them shortly after his transition. They’d tracked Aurora’s destructive magic to his village and found him where he’d passed out in the midst of the fire. He’d been totally unharmed by the blaze, and they’d explained what he’d become.
 

He’d accepted their invitation because he had nowhere else to go. His clan would realize he was immortal, and he couldn’t stay among them as a monster who’d killed his kin. There was no escape from his deeds and no way to return to his home.
 

When he’d arrived at the university, barely able to comprehend everything he saw there, he’d learned that Aurora had been imprisoned for stealing too many souls. The university couldn’t make her return the souls, but they could imprison her for her crimes. They would have executed her if they could have, but she was too powerful and too dangerous. The imprisonment spell had allowed them to maintain their distance but contain the threat.

He’d spent the last three hundred years so close to her and his soul, yet so far away. He’d have killed her to get it back if he could have, but with her locked away, it was impossible.
 

If the witches couldn’t maintain the aetherwalls of their prison and she escaped, he could kill her to get his soul back. But it would be a dangerous hunt, one during which Aurora would be free to wreak whatever havoc she chose.

He’d found a second home here when he’d had to leave his clan. More importantly, he’d found a purpose. Protecting Mytheans and mortals from the misery that had befallen him had become his life. He would uphold his agreement to put the university and the safety of other Mytheans before himself. Without his soul, his word was all he had.

With that in mind, he checked his watch and saw that it was late enough that he could visit the witches. He left his office and strode down the quiet corridors of the Praesidium, then through the early morning stillness across the rolling hills to their main cottage. When he found no one there, he checked the greenhouse that sat at the edge of their little collection of buildings. They often worked there, as well.

“Hello?” he said as he ducked inside the little glass door.

“Back here!” a musical voice called.
 

He walked through the vibrant green oasis, the scent of flowers and dark dirt permeating the warm air.
 

 
Behind a group of fig trees he found Cora, the one he sought, and several younger witches. An orange tree behind Cora exploded when an errant spell hit it. Fragrant orange juice dripped down the glass wall.
 

The witches preferred to have their workspaces and living quarters on the farthest edges of the campus for this very reason. Practicing witches couldn’t always be sure where their spells would land, and the young witches he’d seen in the pub last night were currently destroying the orange tree.

“Hi, Warren,” Cora said, her American accent so similar to Esha’s that he had to shake his mind away from the soulceress. “Thanks for meeting me here. Sorry I wasn’t at the cottage. Why don’t we talk over there?”
 

He followed her to a more secluded corner, where they took seats on wooden boxes.

“You’re here about Aurora,” she said. The marmot riding on her shoulder stared at him, unblinking. He looked away from it to meet Cora’s eyes.
 

“Aye. Can you keep her locked up?” He asked it even though, selfishly, he wanted Aurora to be released so he could hunt her. But keeping her locked away was the right thing to do for the university—she was far too dangerous to be released. She was better off in the witches’ aether prison, that dark nowhere that kept her away from humanity.

“That’s impossible,” Cora said.
 

“Seriously? There’s nothing you can do about it?”

“We tried everything, but the barrier to our prison will break within the week. Aurora is too strong, and we just aren’t as powerful as we used to be.” Cora shoved her pink hair off her forehead and scowled. “She’s the only one in the prison, but we still don’t have enough power to keep her there.”

“Why not? You’re the ones who locked her up in the first place.”
 

“Sure, the Witch Council locked her up, but only a few of us were alive at the time. Calista, the one who created the spell that put the barrier on the prison, passed on to her afterworld a few hundred years ago. We’ve been struggling all these years to keep the boundary closed. Without her, and with the passing of several of our most powerful witches, it’s become too much. We have to recast the original spell, but without a Mythean like her, we can’t.”

“Like her?”

She nodded, reaching up to snag a lizard that ran across a draping petunia hanging above her head. The little creature scrambled across her knuckles before leaping onto her other shoulder and perching there. “Calista was a soulceress, the only kind powerful enough to lock up another of her species. With our help, of course.”

“Witches hate soulceresses.” The rivalry between the two most magical beings was legendary. “Why would you work with one of them?”

“Well, yeah. But she was different. She agreed to work with us in exchange for protection from the Burnings, which was great because she could do things we couldn’t. Haven’t had anyone as strong as she was in years.”

Warren nodded. Calista had been wise to join the university to avoid the Burnings. The mortal witch hunts had incited a similar frenzy in Mytheans. If witches were the bogeymen to mortals, then soulceresses were their Mythean equivalent because of their ability to siphon off the power of others’ souls. They’d fallen prey to the frenzy and used it as an excuse to hunt those they feared. The university didn’t support the Burnings because it was contrary to the law and order that had become their model for staying under the mortals’ radar, but most Mytheans didn’t care. They hunted soulceresses anyway. Nearly every soulceress in Britain had been killed during what had become known as the Burnings.
 

“So you need another soulceress to shore up the boundary to her prison,” Warren said.

“Exactly.”

Warren rose. “I’m going to see if I can take care of that for you.”

“I know whom you’re thinking of. Trust me, we’ve thought of it too. But she’ll never help us.”

“It’s her job.” He’d gone to the effort of getting her to work for the university, and damned if he wouldn’t make sure she did her job.

Though it wasn’t surprising that Cora doubted Esha. Ten years ago, when word of a soulceress come to Scotland had reached the university, they’d sought her out and watched her. She’d been a free-market mercenary, killing only Mytheans, and while she hadn’t killed any pregnant mothers or schoolchildren, she wasn’t particularly picky about her contracts. He’d invited her to join the university because she was too dangerous not to have on their side. When everything in him had screamed to leave her be, to keep her away from the university because of what another of her kind had done to him, he’d found the will to remember his vows to do what was best for his job.