The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (32 page)

Phaleco was already outside with a detachment of giants, more than had been with them recently, and Jovian thought maybe this was a search party that was only now meeting up with them.

“Your things have already been loaded up,” Phaleco said, coming up to them. “We’ll see you off, but there’s no way that we can travel as fast as the groo, so we will, regrettably, not be able to accompany you.”

Jovian soon lost the rest of her speech, if there was any, because just then a white creature stepped out from beside a building, followed by a group of others. He assumed these were the groo, since they had traveling packs slung around them, tied in a strange way since their shoulders and arms were much too large, and far too wide, to fit the backpacks comfortably.

The groo were in the general shape of a human, just three times as wide and three times as large. They were covered in coarse white hair from head to toe, and were naked, though naked in the way a dog might be naked. If he hadn’t seen them with the giants, Jovian would have been frightened by their clawed hands, their large-toothed mouths, and their prominent brows.

But as one looked at him, he realized there was a softness to their eyes, an intelligence that belied their animal appearance. He wouldn’t be surprised if the groo were able to talk, or speak to humans. Their hands, though ending in alarmingly large claws, had fingers like his did, and their feet ended in toes.

“They look almost human,” Maeven said, taking hold of Jovian’s hand. The closeness helped, and Jovian relaxed muscles he hadn’t realized were tense.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said.

“You don’t think so?” Maeven said, looking at Jovian. “Or is there something else on your mind?”

“There’s always something else on my mind,” Jovian mumbled. He rubbed his tired face, and couldn’t help but feel the scar that split it in half. He hoped that was the worst that would happen, but couldn’t help remembering the last fight they’d had with a grigori, and that wasn’t even their leader.

Maeven’s eyes followed Jovian’s fingers and he squeezed Jovian’s hand reassuringly, though he didn’t say anything. Likely he knew how futile it would be.

“So, how do we ride them?” Joya asked, drawing all attention to her.

One groo stepped forward and started motioning with his hand. Phaleco seemed to be reading what his fingers were saying. It reminded Jovian of how he’d seen Grace communicate in the trade language with hand and word.

“You don’t ride them; they aren’t beasts. They will carry you,” Phaleco said, turning to them. “This one says he will carry you, Joya.”

Joya straightened the front of her tunic over her trousers and stepped forward nervously. “Does he have a name?”

Phaleco smiled knowingly. “Not that any human tongue can pronounce. The groo put less emphasis on speaking and more on motions.”

Joya nodded, but before she could say anything more, the groo that had communicated lifted her up into his arms. There he held her, cradled in the crook of one arm so that she was kind of sitting but at the same time pinned to his body with his arm. Instantly she seemed to relax.

“Now we must part,” Phaleco said. “We will keep a larger group here to protect the city. If any angels come looking for you, they will find their journey at an abrupt end.”

Jovian nodded, but before he could say anything another groo had swept him into its embrace. Before long all of the traveling companions had been chosen by a groo, and they were off. Jovian found he couldn’t watch the ground speed by without getting sick, and that the wind hurt his face with the speed of their passing. He pulled his cloak up tight around his face, but the rest of his body was surprisingly warm and comfortable, held as close as he was to the body of the groo.

He didn’t mean to, but Jovian slept through most of the day, only waking when the groo stopped for breaks. That night Caldamron and Shelara joined Jovian and Maeven in the hunt for their dinner, while Joya, Angelica, and Russel stayed back to make camp.

There was no telling where they were now, though they were still in the mountains. Jovian couldn’t tell if they were in the Realm of Earth still, or if they had crossed into the Realm of Water by now. The mountains were pretty nondescript like that. All he knew was there was a carpet of snow beneath his feet, and an endless velveteen blanket of stars above.

Josephine knew that she was nearing the Turquoise Tower. She could feel it in her blood, tickling across her skin, toying with her mind. Since she’d started traveling to the tower, she’d stopped dreaming about it, but always she felt the seductive lure of the structure, calling her on, promising to reunite her with her father, Russel, whom she had thought dead for so many years now.

More than the pull of the tower, she wished to rejoin her father. That’s what truly pulled her on. But there was terror in her bones as well. She knew inside that everything was about to change, nothing would ever be the same after this, and the very realms themselves would suffer.

Josephine had come across other travelers along the way. She had felt the need to hide from them, not to let them know where she was going, though she could tell where
they
were going. She would take the time to lag behind, allowing them to get farther ahead than her, and often she would forsake way stations, even cutting wide around camp fires so that she wouldn’t be spied. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need for secrecy, but something inside of her warned of being spied, and so she kept to herself.

It made travel slow and arduous, but finally she made it into the Barrier Mountains. Days before she came upon the tower, she knew she was close. Josephine could feel it in her mind, like a thousand voices crying out in triumph to the light of a rising sun. Sure enough, the following afternoon she reached the tower, just as a giant earthquake rocked the ground beneath her.

Josephine hadn’t felt an earthquake in these parts in years, so she wasn’t sure what to do. She was in the mountains, and all kinds of loose stones and boulders tumbled her way. Sheer luck kept her out of the way of their crushing might.

As the earth trembled, the air went still, silent, like something menacing was coming. A dark power was growing on the air, and Josephine could feel an answering mourning in her soul. Something wasn’t right at all, and it saddened her and terrified her at the same time.

Her mind was filled with dark musings, as if another entity was implanting them into her mind. She could see the rivers of the Great Realms running red with blood. The fertile fields churned under cloven hooves, burning, smoldering, dead and barren. The empires of man became edifices of madness and terror before her mind’s eye.

Josephine came to herself, on her knees, retching onto the wet ground beneath her. She wiped her mouth, straightened herself, and tried to brush the mud and vomit from her knees. She scowled. Josephine was nervous about entering the field with all the angels as it was, but showing up in the state she found in herself now. . .

But then, into the silence of the air, swelled a cacophony of voices. They hooted, they jeered, and they thundered their triumph into the sky. Then she was deafened by the sound of hundreds of enormous wings taking flight.

Josephine sought refuge behind a fallen boulder, and watched as thousands of black wings spread up into the sky, arcing to the east, heading toward a point she didn’t know. Hours later, when the last of the wings faded into the eastern horizon, Josephine pushed to her feet, and made her way the last leg to her destination.

She was just in time to see another army of wings take flight, these ones white. They sped along after the black wings, and in time, she was alone, standing before the battlefield, red with blood, rife with dead angels of the legion and the host.

Her eyes followed an unsullied path up to the Turquoise Tower, sitting quiet and menacing in the distance. It glowed with a light of its own, pulsing out toward her. Now that she was standing before it in the flesh, she could feel the sheer terror that the dream didn’t capture. She knew the dream had spoken to her angel half, but the fear was played out in the part of her that was still human.

The tower was her death, the death of her human side. She quivered before the structure. It was beautiful beyond words, truly an alien structure, but it also flooded terror into every fiber of her being.

Behind her stones of fire began to rain from the sky, but they didn’t touch her here, and she couldn’t pull her attention away from the entrancing light of the Turquoise Tower.

The first wave of light that flashed from the tower took her in the stomach, or at least that was where she felt it. Josephine crumbled to the ground, feeling the bones and muscles in her back reforming, spreading apart, and making way. She remembered this process from her dreams, and so she tore at the back of her dress, making way for the wings that were about to tear their way free.

Another pulse of light, and she cried out as blinding white pain crippled her senses, her mouth frozen in a scream. Where was her father? Where was Russel? She wanted to look around for him, but another pulse of light tossed aside all thought of her father.

The skin along her back bulged wide, mounded up, roiled as her wings grew beneath the surface of her skin. And then, in a squelching noise she couldn’t hear, but felt all the same, the skin ripped wide open. Rivers of blood sluiced down her sides, mingling with the quantity of blood on the ground beneath her.

Large wings snapped open from her back, thin, transparent. The veins pumping blood across the surface shone like spider webs in the light of the setting sun. Quickly feathers grew, poking out of the skin and lengthening until her wings were covered in white.

What seemed like an eternity later, though it was really just a few minutes, the pain abated as the light ebbed back toward the tower. Josephine stood, her wings rippling out. She opened them wide, sunning them in the last, furtive rays of daylight.

In her reverie Josephine didn’t notice the terrible power growing in the tower until the earth trembled again. She opened her eyes, and like giant black wings, a shadow rose out of the tower, twisting and turning, and headed straight for the sun. There came a sudden halt to the earth, like time stood still, though Josephine knew it hadn’t because birds were still flying and she was still breathing. All the same, the air seemed to hang against her skin like a forgotten memory.

The darkness swarmed up out of the tower and coalesced around the red sun. She watched the shadows thicken, feeling the light robbed from the world. And there it stopped. The shadows hung like a veil of black sackcloth over the sun, stealing away the light, damning the realms to darkness.

When the transition was done, Josephine knew true terror.

Cianna had been traveling for a day. She was aware of the setting of a sun, and the rising of another. All the while the fallen flew, and all the while he held her tight. Her weapons were still with her; likely he didn’t think they were much harm to him, or that she wouldn’t be able to reach them. Even if she was able to draw her blade or crossbow, Cianna was miles above the ground, and hadn’t yet mastered the art of flying. She didn’t desire to die just yet.

She was aware of the point when they approached the Turquoise Tower, and not just because the fallen banked to the left and spiraled down toward the field of the previous angelic battle.

The other indication came in a pulse of light from below. In her dreams Cianna remembered the pulse rippling out to claim her. She never realized it shot up as well.

Daughter, welcome home,
a voice said to her. It wasn’t the voice of her mother, yet it was decidedly female. Cianna’s body went stiff, but there wasn’t the searing pain her cousins had spoken of, for there was no humanity to burn off from her, only the illusion of humanity to crumble.