Excerpt from current draft of book two in the Immisceo series.
(Includes spoilers.)
They stole through the forest like shadows, breaking through the thicket as dawn broke in the sky. As they left the forest, Ardeo moved fast beneath them and Luciana allowed herself a fleeting moment of peace as a fierce breeze whipped against her face, enough to make her eyes water. Nate clutched her waist. The solid warmth of him at her back should have been comforting. Instead, it was a tightening noose around her neck.
He was right. This mission was dangerous. As dangerous as the five before it—perhaps more so with his presence—and the closer she drew to Amara, the likelihood of fatality grew. Losing Eli had very nearly broken her—in fact, it had—but she wouldn’t rest until she’d sought some semblance of justice, so here she was: fractured, shattered, barely holding the fragile shell of her existence together, and if anyone else perished for her sake, she’d fall completely apart.
Nate refused to understand. Her quest, though he never said as much, must have seemed foolish. Petty. And although keeping everyone at arm’s length was, to her, blatantly and obviously sensible, Nate doubled his efforts to stay close and involved, seemingly sprouting eyes on the back of his head and who knew where else, just to keep one on her at every flaming hour of the day.
His fingertips pressed into her waist and she choked back a cold wave of fear. If anything, trying to deter him was having the opposite effect, and now—foolish or not—they were both riding blind into imminent peril.
As the pink sky bled to a brilliant cerulean blue, Luciana slowed Ardeo to a gentle trot. She scanned the area to her right. If they kept going forward, they’d reach Campana by sundown, but the flashes of scenery she’d seen in Amara’s recent dreams were not of the city. Working from memory alone, she followed the skyline, tapping into her instincts and fine-tuning every flash in her mind.
She gave a sharp tug on the reins and Ardeo veered off the path, trotting along at the base of low, rolling slopes and kicking up orange dust.
‘Are we lost already?’ came Nate’s voice behind her.
She ignored him, surveying the landscape with a concentration not even he could break.
The place was familiar. In the short time she’d spent tracking the Mimic, she’d encountered it twice already. Which meant Amara was choosing to stay in one area—albeit a large one.
‘That’s Rubeus Crag,’ Nate said, pointing to their right.
Luciana followed his signal and squinted at the jagged red cliff in the far distance. She nodded, shielding a hand over her eyes and sweeping the land with hawkish precision. ‘There,’ she said, more to herself than Nate. Before he could respond, she flicked the horse’s reins and set off at a gallop in the opposite direction.
They pushed on across a desolate plain towards a mere shadow on the horizon—too incongruent against the landscape to be natural. It shimmered and grew, taking form as they drew closer, and when Luciana and Nate dismounted, they stood in front of a decrepit grey building.
‘What is this place?’ Nate hitched Ardeo to one of many bone-dry trees. ‘Have you been here before?’
Luciana shook her head. ‘Only through Tracing.’ She pulled on the weathered door and it creaked open. ‘It’s perfect for her purposes. Secluded… clearly out of use.’
The barn was falling apart at the seams and the bones of the house that had once stood next to it was little more than rubble. Hazy sunlight funnelled through the gaping roof of the barn, spotlighting the barren interior. Wind whistled in the cracks of the walls, filling the space like ghosts. The whole place felt like a burial site.
And the dead body in the middle of the floor didn’t help.
They approached the corpse as if expecting the fallen man to leap up and launch an attack. Luciana stepped around the body, suppressing the urge to recoil at the frozen fear on the dead man’s face. Crouching, she nudged the body until the man lay flat on his back, then she pressed her fingertips against his cold temples, shuddering as they made contact.
‘What are you doing?’ Nate said.
‘If Amara let slip even a morsel of information, this is where I’ll find it.’
‘But he’s—’
‘Dead? Yes, I can see that.’ Luciana held her breath and summoned the last shred of patience. ‘It hasn’t been long. There’s a window—between death and… beyond. If I’m quick, I can still access his memories. Especially, the recent ones.’ She paused, struggling to stay detached. ‘His last memory is all I’m really interested in,’ she said, then she turned her back on Nate and made contact with the corpse once more.
The connection between minds opened as easily as ever but instead of crashing over her and immersing her within, the memories remained static—fixed and fading fast. Luciana latched onto the nearest fragment, hurtling through the head-space as much as pulling it toward her.
The dismal barn in her peripheral vision disappeared, swallowed whole by darkness. As her sight adjusted, the scene opened up before her.
Lights flickered in windows high above her; small waist-high barrels glowed orange in the alleyways, warming their huddled groups of beggars and orphans—and up ahead, the dead man strode towards her, quite alive, and not alone.
The two sets of footsteps rang out in the quiet city streets. The cloaked men to whom they belonged pushed forward with purpose, silent but for the thud of their shiny boots against the ground. The living dead man, taller of two, clutched a leather-bound tome. His companion clutched a pistol, though his status as protector or aggressor was not yet clear.
As they approached, Luciana instinctively ducked into an alley, forgetting her convenient invisibility. Only when the men drew parallel with her hiding spot, did the feeble glow of the rundown city allow for recognition of the dead man’s companion. Luciana drew a sharp breath, her gaze roving about the face of the other man: the wide brow, the chiselled jawline, and the deeply etched scar cutting along his right cheek.
Garrett.
She cursed under her breath. Of course Nate’s brother was tangled up in this. She should have drawn that conclusion long before now but somehow, she’d talked herself out of it.
Having him under her roof certainly kept her blind. As did sharing her bed with his brother.
Fists balled at her sides, she swallowed her rage and waited for the men to pass, then she tailed them through the deserted streets. Even in the darkness, she knew their destination before they reached it. The stench and ruin of Campana hung in the air and only when they reached the high walls of a large estate did the air clear, filling with the warm yellow glow of the lamps at its borders.
Amara’s estate had been deserted for as many weeks as Luciana had been tracking her, but right now, the stately mansion was lit up and swarming with leather-clad guardsmen. Luciana slipped through the gate behind Garrett and the male witch, taking in her surroundings with a shrewd eye. It brought a reminder of a much less easier entry into the same building weeks earlier. Nate had charmed his way in and they’d spent the night searching for a way to save her son. She’d had hope then—only a morsel of it—but it had been there just the same. Her cause now was altogether more self-serving and completely devoid of hope or anything like it.
The men entered the house and descended the staircase leading to the hoard of rooms on the basement level.
Another meeting?
This floor housed the meeting room she had encountered months ago through Nate’s memories; it was proving to be the most eventful level in the house.
Despite having landed in a memory much father back than she’d intended, if she could eavesdrop on one of Amara’s cosy huddles she still stood a chance of salvaging something worthy.
She held back as the men padded through the red-carpeted corridor and a fierce kind of yearning blossomed inside her chest. It didn’t last long: the men bypassed the meeting room and Luciana’s heart sank.
Another door at the far end of the hall stood ajar though and as she approached, the murmurs within grew louder. Her pulse raced as Garrett ushered the witch across the threshold and she crept in behind them.
‘Contrary to popular opinion, Darius, late arrival is more infuriating than fashionable.’ Amara, immaculate as a portrait, stood front and centre at the helm of a sloped lectern in the candlelit room. A long line of darkly-robed figures gathered before her in a ceremonial procession.
The Mimic fixed the male witch with an icy glare, her pleasant, sing-song tone at odds with her sharp expression.
Luciana’s palms prickled. Heat sparked along her wrists.
There she was.
Amara. The Mimic who had so much to answer for but possessed no answer adequate enough to give.
‘Noted, Mistress.’ Darius kept his dark head low, leaving Garret’s side and scuttling forward, anchoring the formal line-up.
‘Well,’ Amara began, her gaze moving among the many faces before her. ‘Now that we’re all finally here’—she threw a pointed look at a sullen Darius—‘let’s begin, shall we?’
Luciana shook the energy from her hands and inched to the front of the room. She snuck alongside Garrett, noting the awe-struck look on his face and squashing the urge to smack him in the head.
‘Have each of you brought the grimoires?’ Amara cast a swift glance among them to confirm it. ‘Garrett…’
Nate’s brother stepped forward and pulled a double-edged blade from his belt. Amara reached into the depths of her cloak and produced a pale, opaque stone.
Amethyst.
Luciana’s eyes widened in recognition. Tingles spread across her palm as though the flesh itself recalled the frightening power that had since coursed through the same jagged stone; the searing heat as magic bound to flesh, the blinding shockwave at the joining of power to blood, carving through her veins like a thousand blades, filling her with a force that was not hers to possess—Immisceo magic—her son’s magic. Without warning, tears clogged her vision and for the millionth time, she found herself transported back to that night, to the tower, to Eli…
She jumped as Amara’s voice sliced through the memory. ‘Let’s begin with our latecomer,’ Amara said, placing the crystal on the lectern. ‘Darius…’ She beckoned him forward with a pale and dainty finger.
With hunched shoulders and a gait that suggested a longing to dwindle if only he’d dared, Darius approached the Mimic. Amara set the single candlestick farther back on the lectern and gestured to the male witch. He set his grimoire atop the pale wood and bowed his head.
‘Your palm, if you please.’
He pushed his sleeve back and offered his palm, concealing all but the faintest of tremors as he held his hand aloft.
‘This will only hurt a little,’ Amara said, her gleaming gaze not altogether sympathetic. She ran the blade along his palm and squeezed until blood trickled onto the closed cover of his grimoire. ‘Place your wound in the flame,’ she said.
Darius balked but obediently followed her order. The deep crimson gash on his palm gleamed in the light of the candle, and as he hovered the open wound over the flame, he couldn’t suppress a wince.
Amara reached for her own book and began murmuring in a tongue foreign to Luciana’s ears.
The blood on the witch’s grimoire bubbled, scorching into the binding of the book. The flame of the candle intensified, engulfing the witch’s hand in a torrent of heat and setting the lump of amethyst aglow with power. His knees buckled and a pained cry escaped his lips. Then, as quickly as it had raged, the candle’s flame settled once more, leaving an eddy of smoke and a swollen but closed scar at the centre of Darius’s palm.
He let out an audible breath.
‘It is done. The channel is open. You have my gratitude, Darius,’ the Mimic said. ‘And rest assured, as always, your family will remain safe from the Duciti as long as you remain close enough for the stone to access your magic should I need it to.’
Darius nodded, shuffling back to the line on unsteady feet. He looked to the witch next to him—a young woman, no older than twenty. Her wide gaze flickered from Amara to the exit and back again.
‘Who’s next?’ Amara crowed. ‘Don’t all jump at once.’
*
I’m currently writing this book, the second in a fantasy fiction series; I’m approaching the ‘messy middle’ of the story. After a long break, and a lot of rather extreme personal challenges, I’m looking forward to returning to a challenge I find a familiar comfort in: facing the blank page and creating something with the magic of words and the imagination.
