Chapter Thirty-eight
Lilith forced her eyes to remain dry when her sister again slammed her against the wall, and the electric sconces of the theater dove brutally into her back, cracking ribs and rupturing discs. She gritted her teeth, told herself she knew a few healers, and fought back.
Beyond them, the Entity did battle with six of the Thirteen Kings. The theatre lay in ruins, though someone’s magic had put out the flames. Someone else’s magic had rid the building of every human inside, transporting them en masse into the streets and alleys beyond. Alarms were going off everywhere, and the world was filled with the screams of sirens.
Right now, all that mattered was Amunet and Katrielle, and the siblinghood that had soured between them when time began.
Nomads were solitary figures, born into a body here or there, at random and without reason. They’d existed for a long as time itself, and no one, not even the Nomads themselves, had any idea why.
But when Katrielle first came into being, she and Amunet were placed together, in the same home. In the bodies of sisters. It had never been done before, and it was never done again. And again – no one knew why.
No matter how many lifetimes Lilith lived as a healer, a witch, a fae, or ordinary human, she would forever remember that first lifetime. She and Amunet grew up close. Amunet was slightly older than her; it was how she’d been formed, as the older sister. She was gentle and patient with Kat, showing her the ways of the world.
But Amunet was beautiful. They both were. And one day, when Katrielle was ten and Amunet thirteen, as seemed to fill the pages of history books, men came to town and brought with them ruin.
Their parents were killed. Katrielle was beaten and tossed to the side, too young to keep as a slave. Amunet, however, was taken.
Katrielle searched for two long years for her sister, but failed to find her. She was new in her first Nomad form and unaccustomed to using her powers. She was lost, and only the kindness of strangers and her ability to sew and cook kept her alive.
Just as she was beginning to blossom herself, and her foster parents were beginning to talk of marrying her off to a noble in a distant land, Katrielle awoke to the worst feeling she had ever had. Worse than her beatings. Worse than losing her parents.
In that moment, that morning, she knew Amunet was dead. She knew how it had happened. She’d been used and abused to the point of death by her abductors. And now Kat’s big sister was no more.
She ran away from her foster home that day and made her way into the mountains. There, among peaks of death that were laced with ice and the ragged welcome of rocks weathered by time, she slipped and fell.
And found herself floating above the chasm, held aloft by a power she hadn’t known she possessed. This was her first experience with Nomadic magic. She had been born into the form of a young witch. And with this initial step, she started down the path of mage, becoming stronger – and more beautiful. In time, she found the dragons.
And they found her… but that was another story.
In the decades and even centuries that would pass, Katrielle would come to fully learn and appreciate who and what she truly was. She would come to understand her own powers, and she would understand that somewhere, in some realm, the Nomad that had strangely been born as her sister had probably been reborn as well. She was perhaps making a life of her own, time and again. And hopefully she had learned how to use her powers so that each life was better than the last.
You learned how to use your powers all right, said Lilith now, speaking directly into her sister’s mind.
Across from her, Amunet’s gaze narrowed. You knew… all this time, you knew where I was locked in that sleep. And yet you never came to me. You abandoned me.
No, said Lilith. I abandoned the monster you became.
Monster! Amunet’s indignant mental shout caused a rupture in the wall beside Lilith’s head. The brick and mortal split apart, and pieces of building material crumbled away to fall to the charred theatre floor below.
You think I’m the monster? How can you? After what we suffered?
And then Amunet froze, and her eyes grew wide, and Lilith knew that her sister had just figured it out. All of it.
It was you…. thought Amunet. You told Amun Re to place me in that sleep. How else would he have known to keep me from dying? “Only you knew,” she hissed aloud. In the distance, thunder rolled closer, drowning out the sound of sirens and alarms.
Only you knew what I was! Only you knew that asleep, I could never be reborn!
Lilith felt those tears now, the ones easily held back in physical pain but impossible to deny in the face of family. Amunet released her, and she stepped back. Her eyes were dark and stricken. All hint of glee at the situation she and the Entity had caused was suddenly gone. In its place was pain, pure and unhidden by practice.
But it was short-lived.
Outside the main theatre came the sounds of explosions, several one after another. The ground beneath them shook, and Amunet glanced to her right, to the open doors that had failed to keep the humans locked in to their demise. Beyond them, smoke and debris hid from view what was transpiring.
She seemed to consider the outside world a moment – then she straightened, rolling back her shoulders. She faced Lilith again, and her gaze narrowed. Just like that, her expression was serene. And cold.
“Evangeline is your daughter,” she said coolly. “I sensed there was something more to her, and now I know why. She is my niece. I had planned to make her family. Little did I know she was family already.”
Lilith felt a spike of something nasty rise within her. But she tempered it, knowing that Eva was with Korridum now, and he would die keeping her safe.
“And Arach will die to possess her, little sister,” said Amunet with a smile. She’d clearly read Lilith’s thoughts. “Should your Dragon King dispense of Arach’s current form, you and I both know he will only return in another.” She smirked and reached out to touch Lilith’s hair. “You look quite fetching with flaxen hair.”
Lilith pushed outward with her power and struck her sister in the chest, sending Amunet flying backward over the seats behind her. Somewhere near the fourteenth row, she struck velvet, and the seats beneath her crumbled.
Amunet’s fallen form vanished – and returned in a flash, standing to Lilith’s right. Lilith spun, but Amunet was sneakier and faster on that kind of draw. She struck Lilith across the face with a vicious backhand aided by cruel, hateful magic, and Lilith followed her sister’s example, flying backward to land twenty feet up the aisle, closer to the theatre’s doors.
She rolled a few feet, stopped, and looked up to find Amunet very slowly approaching her. “You know, you can always apologize,” said the dark haired Nomad. “And ask to be welcomed back into the fold. There’s always room for family.”
Lilith pushed herself up onto her elbow, but she was admittedly dizzy. She’d never been struck by her sister before. Pain was exploding behind her eyes and moving down her neck. Amunet’s power was immense. “Apologize for what, exactly?” she asked, as she touched her head and blinked to get the blurriness out.
“Oh, well let’s see,” said Amunet, pausing in the aisle to tick off her fingers. “First you let those men take me away. Not that you could have stopped them, but I’m choosing to count it anyway because that pretty much set the ball rolling.” She paused and grinned proudly. “Would you look at that, I’m absorbing the colloquialisms of this time already! Now, where were we?”
She ticked off a second finger. “Second, you stopped looking for me. That was most certainly your fault. Third, you had me killed – so to speak – by my own husband no less, which counts as our number four offense, in my book.” She held up a fourth finger as proof.
“And you did it right after I’d given birth to my daughter.” She held out her thumb, in a high-five of things Lilith had done wrong, then she lowered her hand and cocked her head to one side. “And now you dare to stand against me.” She shook her head slowly. “You’ve been a very naughty girl, little sis.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
William stood atop the tallest building in Seattle and watched the storm spinning miles away, where he knew two opposing forces were locked in deadly combat. For the first time in forever, he couldn’t tell how things would end. He didn’t know who would win or who would lose.
She was taking his Sight from him, just as she was once more giving him a chance at everything else. He’d known he would lose it; he’d never been able to see past this point. He saw flashes, nothing more. But he hadn’t realized… it would be because of her.
He closed his eyes as her face floated before his mind’s eye. She laughed, and he heard it down to his soul. She always looked the same, sounded the same. In every life. She always had those eyes.
Pain gripped his chest, real and physical. Heart attack? he wondered bitterly – because he knew he could never be so lucky.
Time pressed in on him. Helena was out there, alive again. And so was he. William could feel the bastard in his very non-human bones.
The storm over Elliott Bay and downtown Seattle was growing into a very big storm. Strange colored lightning emanated from its core, and fire smoke, thick and black, billowed up from some catastrophe below. Even from this distance, William could make out the combined extra lighting of police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances. Helicopters circled overhead, but had to steer clear of the unnatural tempest.
There were Nomads in that battle, Travelers of immense power. There were probably a dozen Kings and Queens of the Realms. And yet it was nothing compared to what William knew had been unleashed on the world.
He couldn’t put his finger on the exact moment or the triggering event, but something had set it in motion. Perhaps it had all begun when Roman D’Angelo first laid eyes on Evellyne Grace Farrow. Perhaps it was sooner than that. Something with more power than him had brought her back, breaking his contract with Time. And no matter how much he wanted to rail against the world for betraying him so cruelly, the truth was… he’d known it was coming.
William was the last King. Helena was the last Queen.
He’d known all along. He’d known for eons. Every time he met her again, he knew. Every time she perished in his arms, he knew. Even when he’d signed the contract with his Time-tainted blood. He’d known.
He’d simply wanted to believe otherwise. And sometimes that desire was stronger than logic, stronger than fact. It was the fiction that ruled nations and started wars – belief. He was a fool.
“The good guys don’t always win,” came a small voice from behind him. William blinked, and slowly turned. The wind whipped through his coal black hair, and lightning flashed in his green eyes.
A young boy stood with him on the rooftop, fifteen to twenty feet from William. He was dressed in clothing from the early twentieth century, and he held a cap in his hands. His hair had perhaps at one point been slicked back by well-meaning parents, but play and weather had set it free, and now the wind tousled his dark locks with glee.
William laughed softly and shook his head.
The boy frowned. “What are you laughing at?”
“How good my imagination is,” William replied. Then he turned back to the storm and watched.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
William lowered his head, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “You aren’t going away, are you.” It wasn’t so much a question as an admittance of defeat in this.
“I can’t. Not as long as you need me,” the boy said.
William turned back to him. “Yes, I’m scared. Are you happy?”
The boy seemed genuinely unperturbed, and genuinely curious. “Why are you scared? Nothing lasts forever. If he takes her, the world will end. You would finally be at peace.”
William’s anger spiked. Somewhere, a clock stopped. “Really?” he asked softly, incredulously. His accent, sculpted by countless years and too many places, became thicker in his ire. “Does time stop when there is no world to keep it?” He shook his head. He’d been around a hell of a lot longer than the people of planet Earth. He knew better.
“Then you’re afraid of being alone.”
William made a derisive sound and turned his broad back on the boy.
“But aren’t you alone now?”
“Oh, for the love of….” William pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I’m talking to myself.” He hadn’t done this in a long time, by human standards. But he wasn’t human, and it had only been a hundred years. Practically yesterday.
William noticed the absolute silence and opened his eyes. The small child was gone.
At once, William felt very much alone indeed.