The Angel Stone

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The castle was actually a ruin. Fire-blackened walls jutted like broken teeth from the blasted rock. Fragments of statues lay in heaps about the walls, as if they had been pitched from the battlements and they were the petrified remains of the last invading army. The drawbridge was lowered, the portcullis raised, the doors wide open. I walked through into a wide courtyard lit by flickering torches. An enormous pyre stood at the center of the courtyard. Three women were tied to the stake. I recognized Nan and Una and assumed the third woman was Mordag. In front of the pyre, a long scaffold had been erected. More than a dozen more women stood on it, with ropes around their necks. Three cloaked witch hunters stood in front of the scaffold, their faces concealed by beaked masks. The firelight caught a glimmer at the throat of the middle figure. I felt the chill of the angel stone from across the courtyard.

He strode toward me, crossing the space in less time than should have been possible. I heard the flutter of wings behind him and saw their shadows loom on the walls behind the torches. When he was a few feet away he stopped abruptly, the eyes behind the mask riveted on the Luckenbooth brooch. I touched my hand to it to reassure myself it was firmly pinned to my cloak. A spark of static electricity flew off it toward the angel stone. The nephilim tilted his head, like a crow considering a tasty bit of carrion.

“Ah,” Endymion crooned, with a smile that set my teeth on edge because he wasn’t smiling at me. He was smiling at the villagers behind me. “I see you’ve brought me another witch.”

“They haven’t brought me,” I said. “They’ve come with me to save their women and banish you from their village.”

Endymion turned his smile on me. “Are you sure, witch? I promised them that if they delivered you to me, I would spare the rest of their womenfolk. And they have delivered you.”

I began to tell him he was wrong, but then I recalled how the villagers had waited for me to pass their houses and fallen into step behind me. I had thought they were coming to fight the nephilim, but did I really know that they weren’t bringing me as a sacrifice?

I turned to face them. William stood closest to me. He moved toward me, but a woman took a step forward and grabbed his arm. I recognized Jeannie.

“Don’t you see,” she cried. “William, you’ve been enchanted by her. Once she’s burnt at the stake, you’ll be free!”

William shook off Jeannie and faced the crowd, enraged. “You fools!” he shouted. “Do ye think these are men who will honor their word? These are monsters. And how do you think they became monsters? By betraying their own and feeding off the betrayal of others!”

Had they? Had William picked something up in the ravine that I had missed?

I turned back to Endymion, and before his gloating smile could fade I reached out and laid my fingers on the angel stone, reciting as I did a spell I’d learned from Wheelock to ward off regret and grief. “Abi dolorem! Paenitentiam apage!” Instead of regret and grief, I felt a swelling of warmth—the love the nephilim had felt for their fathers, a love so strong that when their fathers turned on them, the nephilim offered up sacrifices, first humans and then their own children, in a desperate bid to win back their fathers’ love. Those bloody sacrifices had turned them into the monsters they were now.

“And do you believe you are any different, witch?” Endymion sneered. “Wouldn’t you sacrifice this whole village for your beloved? And why not? They have turned on you. Sacrifice them, and I will make the Fairy Queen grant you and William safe passage through Faerie.”

“You can do that?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized that just asking the question meant I wanted to do it. He smiled, and the angel stone grew warmer under my hand.

“Of course. Every seven years we demand a tithe from the fey in exchange for not slaughtering all the fey in this world. But this year the Fairy Queen planned to renege on our deal and keep William for herself.”

“But you took Mordag before Halloween night,” I pointed out.

“Ah, she was a hostage. We always take one when the tithe is due. The queen knew the price of keeping William. But if we offer to spare her kind until the next tithe is due, then she’ll let you and William pass through Faerie. You can take him back to your own time.”

I thought of the old stories, like Tam Lin, in which the fairies paid a tithe to hell with a human sacrifice to the devil. But it wasn’t to the devil, I saw now; it was to the nephilim, a bribe to keep them from killing their own. It made sense. And if the Fairy Queen had already bargained with the nephilim, perhaps she would again. William could travel back to Fairwick with me …

“But Callie will not do that.”

It was William, at my side, his hand in mine. I knew without looking at him that if he let me sacrifice his village for his life, he wouldn’t be the man I loved, just as he knew that if I sacrificed Fairwick to stay with him, I wouldn’t be the woman he loved. I realized in that moment both how much I loved him and that we could not be together. I felt the brooch pulse once over my breast, and the spell echoed in my head. Abi dolorem! Paenitentiam apage! As I heard the words, the angel stone dropped into my hand like a ripe apple falling off the bough. Endymion Endicott’s eyes grew as wide as apples. Before he could react, I slapped the stone into the brooch. It slid into the space between the two hearts as though it was meant to go there. Energy pulsed through me—a wild, elemental force so powerful I wasn’t sure I’d be able to channel it, but then William squeezed my hand and called behind him. “Now, lads!”

At a signal from William, the Stewards raised the plaid field to enclose the circle, trapping the three nephilim in the courtyard. The monsters opened their mouths and made a terrible sound like crows cawing. In answer came the beating of wings above our heads. I looked up and saw the shadow of black wings against the moon. Hundreds of nephilim. So many they soon blocked out the moon. Another signal from William triggered the Stewards to raise their arms. The tartan arced over the courtyard, forming a dome that protected us from the nephilim in the air. We had only to deal with these three.

Facing Endymion, I felt the energy of the tartan thrumming through me. It could be channeled through the stone. I held up the stone and aimed it at Endymion, but at the same moment Endymion gave a signal to the two other nephilim and they dropped their torches on the bonfires. I heard Nan and Una and Mordag screaming. I aimed the stone instead at the nephilim closest to Una. A beam of white light shot out of the stone and struck him. He burst into flame, his screams like the caws of a crow. The second nephilim was running toward me, but I aimed the stone and struck him a glancing blow that set his cloak and hood on fire. He clawed at his burning mask with gloved hands. As the mask burned off, it revealed a face beneath with the same long black beak and glowing red eyes, only now the beak snapped angrily, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The burned-away gloves uncovered long yellow talons, which reached out and grabbed me by the throat, pulling us both into the burning pyre. Searing pain scorched my back, and the stench of the monster’s breath—a smell like rotting meat and burning flesh—filled my lungs. He opened his mouth wide as if to swallow me … Instead, he seemed to swallow himself, dissolving into black ash that coated me with a sticky resinous film. I blinked in the black rain and saw above me another figure cleaving the flames, but this was not a nephilim. I had seen this creature before—a dark-cloaked man riding a wave of white moonlight, just as my demon lover had come to me. William strode through the fire and lifted me in his arms, his tartan cloak shielding us. I looked back only long enough to see two Stewards wade through the flames, their cloaks protecting them as they rescued Nan, Una, and Mordag.

When I turned back, Endymion stood before us. The fire had burned away his cloak and gloves, revealing eerie white flesh that glowed with a bluish light. Unlike the other two nephilim, Endymion’s face was beautiful—the face of an angel. His unfurled wings were golden in the firelight. How cruel, I thought, to be granted such beauty but still be a monster in your parents’ eyes.

I felt William’s muscles tense. He slowly lowered me to the ground, placing me beside him. I clenched the stone in one hand, William’s hand in the other. Endymion smiled.

“What a worthy opponent you’ve turned out to be,” he crooned, his voice gentle as a lover’s. “I look forward to meeting you again.”

Then, before I could aim the stone at him, he rose straight into the sky, his great wings beating the air into a maelstrom of ash and sparks. The tartan dome, weakened by the breaks in the line as the Stewards tended to the accused witches, shattered. A rain of multicolored sparks drifted to the ground. I stared up, waiting for another attack, but nothing came. The sky above was clear, the full moon pouring white light into the courtyard like cool water to bathe our burns and clean away the ash. I looked at William. His hair, singed from the fire, stood up in wild peaks, his face blackened with ash and streaked with blood. He resembled one of the wild blue-painted Picts that had defended Scotland from the Romans centuries ago. Like a warrior. I glanced around the courtyard and saw that the Stewards and the villagers were all stained with ash and blood. Una and Nan were tending to them. The glow of the tartan was still on them, and Nan was using it to bind wounds and heal burns. She looked up from treating a gash on Jamie McPhee’s forehead and caught my eye. She administered a quick stitch in glowing blue thread, told Jamie he was a “braw lad,” and came toward us.

As she approached, her eyes were on my hand that held the stone. I still held William’s hand in the other. She reached out her hand for mine, and I laid it in hers. She gently un-pried my fingers from the brooch. I heard William gasp. As I’d used the stone, the silver of the brooch had heated up and burned my skin. The silver was embedded in my flesh. Nan lifted the brooch as gently as she could but not so gently that it didn’t hurt like hell. William squeezed my hand as I bit back a scream. Seared into my palm was the pattern of the two interlocked hearts. Nan laid her hand over mine and emitted a healing green light, which smelled like mint and felt like a balm. When she moved her hand, the pain was gone, but the mark was still there.

“Aye,” Nan said, “some marks are worth keeping.” She lifted her eyes from my hand to my face. “Remember us when you look on that. The Stewards of Ballydoon will always remember you. You’ve given us a way to protect our village. And now that ye have the stone, you can save yours.”

She squeezed my hand again, bathing it once more in her healing green light, then nodded, her eyes shining, and turned to go back to tend her village. As I must do now. The green balm could do nothing to ease the ache I felt in my heart knowing that. I turned to William.

“I know ye must go,” he said. “Do you have to leave from a particular place?”

“No,” I said. “I’m the door, so I can open a passage anywhere. But I don’t want it to be here. I have an idea of where it should be. Will you come with me?”

William smiled and touched my face. A bit of the red from the tartan warmed my cheek. “Whither thou goest, I goest.”

We walked out of Castle Coldclough and down into the blasted ravine.

“You still have to get past the Fairy Queen,” William said as we walked. “She cursed you, too, remember.”

“Yes,” I said. I hadn’t let myself think about that until I had the stone, but now I did. “I think I can convince her to remove the curse. I understand now that the tithes she’s been paying have been to save her people from the nephilim. But when she sees that I have the stone and that I can protect her people in the future, she’ll have to see reason.”

William made a skeptical noise—he knew the Fairy Queen better than I did—but he didn’t argue. He seemed to be working something out in his head. I was, too. If the Fairy Queen was willing to bargain to let me through Faerie, mightn’t she be convinced to let William through, too? But if I brought him with me to Faerie and she didn’t let him into my time, then he’d be trapped in Faerie again. I couldn’t take that chance. It was better to leave him here in Ballydoon, where he was safe. Perhaps he had also figured out the same thing in his head. We walked in silence to the bottom of the ravine, where the petrified vines twisted together like a nest of snakes.

“Here?” William asked. “It isna a verra pretty place.”

“No,” I admitted, “but it once was. And it can be again.” I let William’s hand go and took a step back. I closed my eyes and uttered the words I’d used when I first tied myself to the door. Cor mea aperit, tam ianua aperit. As my heart opens, let the door open. I felt a swelling in my chest … and an ache. It felt different than when I’d last done the spell. It hurt—as if to open the door I had to break my heart open.

Because you’re leaving him.

I opened my eyes. A small white light was glowing amid the blackened and petrified vines.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. The light wavered like a candle in the wind.

“I know you must go back,” he said, taking my hand. The light grew into a pillar and then swelled into an arched doorway. As its light touched the petrified vines, they turned green and flowers bloomed. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, the scent that had first brought him to me.

“I love you,” I said.

William smiled and shook his head. “You love the man I will become …” He bent his head to mine and kissed me on the cheek, whispering in my ear, “… And so I must become that man.” Then he wrapped his arms around me and stepped us both through the door.