Moments, and I was grabbing on to what hair I could find and bucking my hips against him, crying out to the Gods.
Aaron was done, I was done, and when I came back down from whatever cloud Aaron had just sent me to, my alarm clock signaled the start of the morning. If it had gone off a minute earlier I would have thrown it out the window.
“Good morning,” Aaron said, grinning from between my legs.
I pulled him up to me by the shoulders and smiled into his eyes. “Good morning,” I said.
“You sound rested.”
“Do I? I think I’m pretty out of breath.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah… I think I will be. So, what are you doing today?”
“I’m gonna head down to my uncle’s garage, get down to my first official day of work.”
“Nervous?”
“Nah. I love cars, remember? And he’s told me he has one in the back he’s been trying to build for a while but just hasn’t had the time. I’m gonna see if he can show it to me.”
“Do you know what kind of car it is?”
“No, but knowing my uncle it’ll probably be a muscle car like mine.”
“I can make you breakfast if you want, before you go?”
“Only if you’re making some for yourself.”
“Yeah, I think I will today. Kinda have to after what we just went through.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
I reached for his face with my hands, cupped it, and kissed him on the forehead. “Go and have a shower. I’ll get breakfast.”
Aaron smiled, pecked me lightly on the lips, and headed off—naked—into the bathroom. His shoulders weren’t the only thing you could bite into. Everything about Aaron was firm and rigid, and yet his ass still had a little jiggle to it. Curious, but nice.
I shook the thought away, slipped into my robe, and then headed downstairs into the kitchen to fix up a breakfast fit for an army. Steamy scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, granary toast and orange juice. The works. I didn’t normally cook as much, not for breakfast, but I had a little excess bacon and just loved making scrambled eggs. And I knew Aaron’s appetite had evolved into something monstrous since he had been gone.
Aaron joined me at the table a little later, after having changed into a pair of dark jeans, a grey shirt, and his leather jacket. I watched, wide eyed, as he wolfed down a number of rashers of bacon and a healthy serving of scrambled eggs all in silence. Meanwhile, I filled my plate with what was left; two rashers of bacon, a handful of scrambled eggs, and all four slices of granary toast. Didn’t he like toast?
When he was done Aaron stood up, wiped his mouth on a kitchen napkin, kissed me lightly on the lips and stole half a rasher of my bacon before heading for the door with a cheeky smile on his face.
“You’ll pay for that,” I said.
“Oh I know I will,” he said from the door.
The sound of his voice made me shudder with delight. Pay with interest, I thought.
“I’ll catch you later,” he said, “Tonight, maybe?”
“Tonight, yeah,” I said, smiling.
Aaron nodded and made his exit, and then I finished off what was left of my breakfast before settling down to check my emails and social media. I had set up my laptop to receive electronic correspondence sent to the bookstore so that I could answer emails from home. They didn’t come often, but some folks enjoyed not having to actually come down to the shop to ask after a title they wanted. I also found it easier to make an order if I had all the information stored on a neat spreadsheet instead of scribbled down on snippets of paper scattered around the store.
I was organized and efficient now, and I was sure the bookstore was benefiting from my close attention and care. Not that Eliza and I together ever did a bad job, but we distracted each other far too often. I loved her for it, though. I’ll never forget the great memories
A cold feather, running down my spine and arousing the skin around it, cut my thoughts short. My body stiffened and I took in a deep breath. Something was happening. I wasn’t sure what, or where the feeling was coming from, but somewhere—nearby—something was going on. The attic? No. My bedroom?
I stood up, turned around, and stared at the opening to my bedroom. The window was open and light was flooding in from the outside. Nothing about the ambiance or the atmosphere inside my house felt suffocating as it had done before.
Great, I thought, Just when I was starting to feel safe at home again.
Only, I didn’t feel threatened. Whatever was going on wasn’t happening inside my house, and wasn’t a direct threat to me. That, at least, I took a little comfort in. So, barefoot, I made a tour of the house checking every nook and cranny, every door and window, until finally I came to the back door—unlocked it—and stepped outside.
There, right in my back yard, I found the source of my unease. I had to put a hand to my mouth and search for the door frame to steady myself because the world was starting to spin. An entire half of my back yard was dying. The grass was drying and decaying. The tree which offered me shade from the sun, was shedding instead of growing. Fresh leaves falling off it in throes, and part of the bark seemed to be turning black, withering and dying.
A cold easterly breeze was blowing, and on its back I could smell the rot and decay. And it made my stomach churn.
Then I saw it. The culprit. The crow. It was sitting on the tree, perched on a withered limb. Smug. It cawed, and my body tensed at the sound. My breathing quickened. Fire started to burn inside my chest, warming me. Consuming me.
Was this thing responsible for the deaths of the birds in town? Were they falling whenever it passed close to them? Was it a harbinger of death, or a reaper? I couldn’t tell. Not immediately. But as I readied my mind and soul to attack the thing with all of my might the bird cawed, and the sound gave me pause.
In my mind’s eye, the bird’s caws were intelligent. Directed. I hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but I noticed it now. The crow took flight and landed at my feet, only a few yards away. Another caw, and this time I received the message. It was… apologizing. Caw. And it wanted me to follow it.
Right now.
Was history repeating itself? Months ago, a big Raven was appearing to me, warning me of impending danger and leading me toward the clues that helped me solve the mystery of Lily’s death. But the Raven wasn’t real. It was Lily’s ghost showing itself to me in the only way it could. I sometimes wondered whether the bird ever truly existed in the real world at all, or if I only ever saw it with my mind’s eye so vividly I believed it to be real.
But this bird was real. And if I concentrated enough and watched it with my mind’s eye—with my ethereal senses—I would see that it has an ethereal counterpart. A larger crow made almost entirely of shadow, with glowing yellow eyes poised at the front of its face instead of on its sides. A shadow bird.
I had never before heard of such a thing, but I had heard that crows were often thought to be harbingers of death—and not reapers. Maybe its passing caused things to die. Weak things, like plants and animals. Maybe it wasn’t at all responsible for the death, and all it wanted to do was deliver a message. A message to me.
But why me?
Whatever it wanted, it had my attention now. So I got dressed as fast as I could and followed the bird wherever it wanted to take me, cautious to keep my eyes on it and reminded about the time I followed a bird right to the riverbank and then took a dip in the freezing cold water. This was all looking way too familiar, but I pressed on.
The bird flew ahead, and I followed on foot. It took me out of the suburbs, ten minutes or so, and then into a densely forested park. This was a public park, with a hiking trail that led up to the cliffs, but I hadn’t been inside of it very often; and I had never walked off the path, either. Not that I thought I would get lost if I did, but the path had been carefully carved out through the flattest parts of the forest. The rest of it was a jungle of dips and hills, of rocks and trees.
<
br /> The bird fluttered from tree to tree, seeming to wait whenever I fell behind and take off as I approached. Odd, sure. But unsettling, too. Because wherever it waited—wherever it stayed for more than a moment—the things it touched would begin to decay and wilt away. Healthy brown tree bark would turn black, leaves would go brown and fall to the ground, and wounds of sap would begin to leak.
Thump.
I jumped and backed up as a large hunk of dead thing hit the ground not three feet from me. My heart skipped and bounced behind my ribcage as I approached, hands trembling, to investigate. It was an owl. An owl! I stared up into the trees to see where it had fallen from but couldn’t spot a nest.
Thump-thump.
Two more birds fell from the sky. They were falling.
“Stop!” I yelled into the forest, hoping that the crow could hear me. “Stop it right now!”
I didn’t care if it wasn’t its fault. I couldn’t bear to see what was happening here. Everything was dying, and for what?
I stood up and searched for the bird, but I couldn’t find it in the trees. What did catch my eye, though, was a slight pillar of smoke rising into the air not far from where I was. I approached, careful not to move too quickly for fear of falling over and really hurting myself, and arrived at the foot of a cottage situated in the middle of a small clearing.
A clearing stained with the touch of death.
Thin white mist floated a few inches off the ground and retreated as I moved through it, step by step. The cottage was a small building. A single floor made of stone with box windows and a door on the long edge, and a chimney on the far end. The wooden roof had collapsed in some places, but otherwise seemed to be in good repair. And whatever vines had once smothered the cottage and hidden it from sight now lay dead around its feet, like a former owner killed over a property dispute.
Something about this was starting to feel familiar. Hadn’t I written about a dying forest before? Birds falling out of the sky, trees and grass, and plants dying? The story came from a dream, and in the story there were wolves. But I couldn’t remember if they had a part in my dream of if they were just an added touch of fiction on my part.
The déjà vu was tough to ignore, but I shoved it to the back of my mind and called out. The chimney was smoking, and that meant someone was here.
“Hello?” I said. The woods took my voice and spread it far.
A second passed, then another, and another.
I called again.
The door to the cottage creaked open, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what I was going to find on the other side. In my dream, and in the story, it was a tall, hooded figure with a skull for a face and bony fingers. In my dream, the thing I encountered in the woods was death incarnate; and it was about to try and kill me. Would death be waiting for me behind that door?
I shouldn’t have come here. Not alone. I should have waited for Frank and Damien, I should have asked Aaron to come. Damn my intrepidity! I was about to turn around when the door opened, but the cottage’s inner shadow and darkness swallowed whatever figure lay beyond the threshold. I watched, heart thumping in my ears. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Then, as if manifested from the darkness itself, a dark woman stepped out of the cottage like a specter out of a tomb.
An instant passed, something fluttered nearby, and from the trees came the crow, rushing down from the skies to settle on the shoulders of the beauty wreathed in black. She was wearing an old fashioned black dress that came down to her feet and had a high neck line. Her skin was pale, but I noted a distinctly olive green hue to it. Her lips were full and red, her eyes dark and heavy with liner and shadow. But she seemed sunken, too pale, and the purple bags under her eyes gave away immense tiredness.
Lub-dub—lub-dub—lub-dub!
I stared, perplexed, and swallowed. “W-who are you?”
The lady in black curtsied and said “It iz an honor to finally meet ze red witch.”
CHAPTER 6
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she said, “And yet a part of you does.”
“I don’t understand.”
“But you will.”
She was French. I had spent enough time around the French to recognize the accent. And if her voice didn’t give her European heritage away, her olive skin surely did. Here was a girl who, tired as she was, was absolutely stunning. Her features were soft and sharp in all the right places, eyes piercing and intelligent, and her lips full and pouty.
I was drawn, pulled in like a fly to a trap.
With a simple wave of her hand she broke me away from my own thoughts and urged me into the cottage she had been living in. The inside was quaint and cozy, but by no means comfortable. Broken furniture was strewn about the place, tables and chairs lost to the ravages of time, and no bed to speak of. I wondered how she was living here at all, if you could even call it living.
At least there was a fireplace for the cold, and the cottage was warmer for it.
We stared at each other from atop the remains of an old, crooked table. It had lost one of its legs and lay dilapidated on its side like, the corpse of a soldier left on a battlefield. Neither of us said a word until, finally, I found the right thing to say.
“I know you,” I said, from the part of me that acted without thinking.
“As I know you,” said the French girl.
“How do we know each other?”
“Through our dreams. You have dreamt about me, oui?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“And I have dreamt about you. The red witch. The purifying flame that fights the darkness.”
“I don’t know who you think I am but—”
“You are ze red witch,” she said, advancing. I jerked back a pace. “I will not hurt you,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t even know your name.”
“Collette.”
“Collette, thank you. My name is Amber.”
“Amber. A fitting name.”
I took a breath. A beat. “So, we have been dreaming about each other,” I said, “Fine. I’ll accept that. Now, could you tell me why you’re here and why your bird has been off killing things?”
Collette sighed and gestured to the only set of thatched chairs ready to sit on. I approached the seat and checked it for structural flaws by giving the backrest a good shake, but it seemed sturdy enough so I sat down. The French girl sat opposite me, displaying the pinnacle of ladylike manner in her posture; back straight, hands at her knees crossed over each other. Boarding school, probably. I straightened out my own back.
“From the top, please,” I said.
Collette nodded. “Very well,” she said. “I am a witch, like you.”
A new witch! Part of me hummed and beamed, excited, but I contained it. I nodded.
“A few months ago,” she continued, “I started having dreams about a red witch. She always appeared to me wearing a cloak—a red-hooded cloak—wreathed in fire. Ze red witch never spoke, but she was always my enemy; battling the darkness I was wreaking upon her land.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said. I could barely recall the dream I had, though I probably had it written down somewhere. What I did recall, though, was the story I had written. In it, I was powerless to fight the darkness, but I tried anyway. Also, I did own a red cloak. I hadn’t used it in a while, but it was there, in my attic, hanging on a rack.
“Indeed,” Collette said. “I could not believe I would ever do battle with another witch. I would never dream of being someone’s nemesis. And yet, we were enemies. Until I learned what ze dreams meant.”
“What did the dreams mean?” I asked.
“I was being told zat I would need your ‘elp.”
“It sounds to me like we were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Why would we suddenly help each other?”
“Because it was not me you were fighting.”
A gust of wind shrieked through the cracks in the building. The front door swung open and a barrage of dead le
aves flew in. I snapped upright and with a wave of my hand willed for the door to close—and it did. The leaves settled, the fire continued to crackle, and Collette was left stunned.
“Zis is why I need your ‘elp,” she said, “Your sorceress magic is powerful, raw, and charged.”
Sorceress? “I guess. But I’m new to all this still.” A few months as a True Witch didn’t count for much. I knew that.
Collette took a deep breath and readjusted a strand of loose dark hair. “Do you know much about the realm beyond that which we see with our own eyes?”
“The Nether?” I asked.
“The Nether iz not truly a place. It iz a state of being for beings without a body. No. I speak of places. Realms which can be visited by those who know how to open ze doors.”
“What exactly are we talking about here?”
“I am talking about a place of pure darkness, where ze restless souls of the dead dwell. Waiting for their salvation. I am talking about ze Underworld.”
“As in the Greek Underworld?”
“Precisely.”
“I know what I’ve learned from books. Almost every religion known to man has a story to tell about the Underworld; a realm of the dead.”
“What if I told you zat some of them were true?”
I narrowed my eyes. “The past months since my transition from human to witch have taught me that nothing’s impossible, but I’ve never come across the real Underworld before.”
“It iz not a place one simply stumbles upon. There are gates and doorways, some natural, some man-made. When I became a witch a gate to ze Underworld opened before me and swallowed me whole.”
My fingers were starting to go cold. I wondered if the fire was out but it was still softly cracking in the corner of the room, so I rubbed my hands together. “And you survived?”
“I wandered the halls of the dead for days without food and subsisting only on whatever water I could find in ze cavernous underground, but ze Underworld changed me. I became infused with its power and emerged from a gate of my own creation, alive—yet changed.”