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Back We Are Blood and Thunder
Chapters (32)
  1. PROLOGUE
  2. ONE
  3. TWO
  4. THREE
  5. FOUR
  6. FIVE
  7. SIX
  8. SEVEN
  9. EIGHT
  10. NINE
  11. TEN
  12. ELEVEN
  13. TWELVE
  14. THIRTEEN
  15. FOURTEEN
  16. FIFTEEN
  17. SIXTEEN
  18. SEVENTEEN
  19. EIGHTEEN
  20. NINETEEN
  21. TWENTY
  22. TWENTY-ONE
  23. TWENTY-TWO
  24. TWENTY-THREE
  25. TWENTY-FOUR
  26. TWENTY-FIVE
  27. TWENTY-SIX
  28. TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. TWENTY-NINE
  31. EPILOGUE
  32. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Constance, what are you doing?” Winton’s voice again. “Will she be all right?”

“Shut up,” she snapped. The light on her cane flickered and intensified. The spell’s heart rose up a few inches, hovered beneath the girl’s skin, a swirl of dark cloud, a growl of thunder, a stutter of lightning. She held her metal arm over it as she started to unpick the threads binding it to the girl’s quivering heart: she was ready to receive the storm. The spell had grown strong. She shut her eyes. She was so close … She unpicked it carefully, so carefully, so as not to damage it … The girl was screaming.

Mother, Constance thought, remembering the sensation of her arms around her, the feeling of warmth and safety. I am coming.

But Winton’s footsteps hurried nearer. “Constance, stop! Stop! You’re killing her!” He laid a hand on her shoulder, tried to pull her away.

Anger and power flowed through her in an irresistible wave. She turned, raising her palm in a surge of violet light against her brother. He was flung violently through the air, landing hard against a sarcophagus with a resounding crack. He slumped sideways onto the floor. Blood ran down his face and into his thickly curled hair. He was quiet.

Constance found she was panting, her breath fast and shallow. He would not disturb her again.

She returned to the girl, whose wide eyes left no doubt she had seen what had occurred.

“Why did you do that?” Lena whispered.

“He is not like us, Lena. He could never understand.”

“What?”

“We are not like other people,” said Constance softly, her glowing cane hovering over Lena’s heart, ready to continue her work. “I cast the greatest spell in the world, and you have held it, grown it for me all these years. Other people are flesh and bone and sinew, and they wander through life like cattle or sheep, aimless and happy. But we are different.” She smiled a hidden smile. “We are blood and thunder.” She leaned over, feeling the rush of the spell against her face, cool and electric. “We are the heart of the spell.” And she started her work again.

TWENTY-FIVE

Wings

The sensation was … unbearable. It felt like Constance was reaching into her chest with sharp nails and grappling with her heart. She drifted in and out of consciousness, brief and vivid dreams finding her, dreams where she was running through the forest, in the crypts, even on the steps of the Holy Council, enveloped by the storm cloud. It was calling to her, clinging to her: its thunder was her heartbeat, its lightning her spark of life.

It did choose me.

Memories flickered in and out of her vision, punctuated by screams, intense moments of struggling against invisible bindings that pinned her to the unyielding tomb.