Duo (Stone Mage Saga Book 2) Read online

  Duo

  Stone Mage Saga, Book Two

  Raven Whitney

  Raven Whitney LLC

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

  Also By Raven Whitney

  Preview of Tresia

  Duo

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016, Raven Whitney

  ISBN: 978-1-939359-20-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and/or reviews.

  Cover design by The Killion Group

  (http://thekilliongroupinc.com/)

  Editing by Tracey Govender

  (http://traceyedits.blogspot.co.za/)

  Proofreading by Proofreading by the Page

  (https://www.facebook.com/Proofreadingbythepage/)

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank both of my parents first for being so incredibly supportive of their starving artist as I pursue my dreams. Also, for letting me and my kitties live in the barn. My mom, in particular, deserves a bear hug for passing on the writing gene to me and showing me how to use it.

  My friends— who've been with me since before any of us had boobs and read every draft of this book and assured me I wasn't a total hack— deserve a medal. Since I'm too broke to get any made, this'll have to do. I love you guys. Truly, madly, and deeply.

  Finally, I'd like to thank one very special teacher who helped spur me to become the writer I am today. She is the only English teacher I ever really learned anything from. By challenging me when I needed it and literally threatening to beat me with a stick, you whipped my writing skills into shipshape. You are a paragon of teachers.

  1

  The manicured trees loomed high in the darkness, their claw-like branches seeming to reach for us as they swayed in the breeze, making the dark cabin of the roomy SUV feel claustrophobic. It was hard to breathe until the vehicle came to a stop alongside the park a few blocks away from Lexie's house.

  The relief was brief. Small animals scurried through the trees and hedges, rustling the crisp fallen leaves like footsteps. They all sounded as though they were coming closer and even though I knew that they were probably just giving a wide berth to the big, scary humans, my skin still crawled as though all of their eyes were burning a hole in my back. A scarlet letter was now branded into my soul: M for murderer.

  As soon as my feet hit our hometown terra firma, I froze. “I can't do this, Lexie.” My throat constricted painfully around my words. Welling tears burned my eyes and like a lost child, I couldn't stop my hand from squeezing hers as we stood on the side of the road.

  Her thumb stroked my hand in a comforting gesture as she thanked the man-of-questionable-character that we'd hitched a ride with. He thanked her in return for her family's continued business with his organization and vowed his secrecy before he drove away in his black Escalade, leaving us standing on the side of a lonesome stretch of Bellevue Avenue.

  “I can't go back.” My knees quivered and it wasn't from the cold. It had only been a week since Lexie had been taken as bait to lure me into an Arctic hell. But so much had happened— so much had changed— in that time, it felt more like months since I'd been home last.

  She hugged me and I rested my head on her shoulder. Her skin still smelled faintly of her favorite bath soap, even under the more pungent aroma of dried blood and the old, dirty sneakers smell of the cargo plane we'd been smuggled back in. Involuntarily, I cringed just a little when I realized that Lexie still had no heartbeat. How was she alive?

  I wondered if she could tell her heart wasn't beating anymore. If she knew and was somehow still vertical, I would be astounded. Even if she didn't know, how she could muster the strength to be so reassuring when our whole world and everything we knew were being torn apart at the seams was beyond me. I'd never seen her so strong as she had been in the last few days.

  Lexie noticed my reaction and her hand stilled on my back. “We can do this,” she promised. “It's just like that time we got arrested for under-age drinking at that frat party, remember? When we got back for break, you were just as terrified to face your family, but it wasn't nearly as bad as you were making it out to be in your head, was it?”

  I made an odd sound between a sob and a laugh. “It was exactly as bad as I was expecting. And I never even took a sip of that tequila. Just that look of utter disappointment on Mom's face killed me more than Dad's yelling. What would they do if they knew that I… killed innocent people?”

  Lexie was silent for a long moment. “Ignorance is bliss. They don't need to know that part.”

  In spite of everything, she still made me laugh, even if it sounded more like I was choking on something.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But you're right. It would probably be a bad idea to show up looking like we rolled around in a crime scene and smelling like a beached whale.”

  “Where can we go if not home? We have no money, no ID, nothing.” The quiet tone of defeat in my voice betrayed the brave face that I was valiantly— if unsuccessfully— trying to put on.

  She paused to think. “Is there still a spare key to the apartment buried under the bush behind the Philter?”

  I nodded. The small, two-bedroom apartment above my coffee shop was still vacant and would be the perfect spot to hide out until we could clean ourselves up and fabricate a quasi-plausible cover story. It was more than a mile away and our ride was gone, so we'd have to walk all the way to and through town. It would be a treacherous journey to get there without being spotted since our faces were probably plastered on missing posters all over town and the evening news.

  “We'll have to keep our heads down if we don't want to get reported to the cops. I'm sure my family has the whole freaking police force out looking for me,” Lexie said, clearly thinking along the same lines as I was.

  I pulled away and dried my tears. “Luckily for us, it's Halloween so at least we won't stick out too much.”

  She nodded in agreement and started walking toward downtown, in the opposite direction of her childhood home.

  It was well past trick-or-treating hours, so traffic was minimal as we made our way along the empty streets and past the towering manors until the sign for the street the shop was on hung from the corner street lamp, beckoning with the promise of civilization, hot showers, and warm beds.

  I looked up at that glowing orb above us, and suddenly, it was like I was back in that cell: freezing, terrified, and hurting inside and out. I whimpered in the back of my throat and had to bite my lip until it bled, but I managed to keep myself in check until that terror boiled over in a bad way when I saw a man walking down the street towards us in a cheesy skeleton costume. All I could see were ravenous, bloody skulls ripping into a writhing mass of screaming flesh and they were coming right for me.

  My legs gave out and I fell to the ground, the pain of the cold concrete scraping against my hands fueling m
y fear. I shrieked uncontrollably, scooting myself back in fits and spurts until I could see Lexie in front of me.

  She grabbed me by the arms, squeezing until I could feel the pressure in my bones. From inches in front of my face, she screamed, “Snap out of it!”

  Her face grounded me. Lexie wasn't with me in the pit cells. Though I still couldn't stop shaking and hyperventilating, at least I had the power over myself to stop screaming bloody murder. The skeleton man was still walking, though he was giving us a wide berth and a confused look like he thought we were on something.

  “You okay?” she asked, still directly in front of me. “You shattered the concrete under you!”

  For a minute, all I could do was quiver and stare into her eyes, now slightly dimmer than they were before this nightmare began. Eventually, I nodded my head.

  She took my scraped-up hands and pulled me to my feet. Hard.

  I practically flew into her, as though I was being towed by a mack truck. I regained my footing and looked at her questioningly, but she looked just as puzzled.

  She shook her head and held up her hands. “I don't know. I don't want to know. Let's just go.” Lexie grabbed my hand and led me down the sidewalk. I glanced back to see the sidewalk where I landed was broken into tiny pieces.

  There were still some people wandering the streets, mostly adults returning home from parties, judging by their stumbling steps and raucous laughter. Vampires, werewolves, and devils abounded. I couldn't speak for the latter, but the former two costumes were way off base.

  A toilet paper mummy man passed by us, catcalling, “Sleepover zombie! I love it, Blondie!”

  Lexie rolled her eyes and scoffed. But I couldn't help but wonder if that's what happened with Lexie. Her skin was permanently cool now, she hadn't eaten a thing since she popped up out of nowhere in the forests of northern Norway yesterday evening, and somehow she was still alive even after she had been decapitated by Unus' magic finger. The angry, red line circling her neck showed no signs of healing and looked tender and raw, but she didn't voice any pain. Her heart didn't beat and she only took a breath when she was going to say something. Zombie, ghost, cyborg, whatever she was, I was just grateful to have her back and wasn't planning on looking the gift horse in the mouth.

  We rounded the corner of a wood plank fence into the small, empty parking lot behind the brick row-building that the Philter was in. On the inside of the fence were haggard box hedges that hadn't seen a trimmer since last year. Reaching into the space between two of them and digging through the time-compacted dirt, I found the small key buried there in a little plastic zipper bag.

  I fished it out as we climbed the wooden stairs to the second story and the door to the apartment. While my grandfather was still alive, he and my grandmother lived here, above their beloved coffee shop. When he died a few years ago, my grandmother couldn't live with all of the memories, so she passed the shop to me and moved back to a little cottage in their native Wales. After graduating with Lexie from Brown University, I'd expected to move into here and stay until I married the love of my life and started a family.

  Boy, how plans change.

  Unlocking the door, I pushed it open on its familiar, creaky hinges. One day, I would have to oil those, but today, I was so inexplicably happy to hear the high-pitched squeaks. The warm air— the first real warmth I'd felt against my skin in a week— wafted over us, sending chills down my spine. The scent of coffee, home, and my grandmother's favorite perfume made me let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

  We stepped into the narrow living room and for a moment, all I wanted to do was collapse on the cream colored sofa, but then I remembered that I would just smudge it with all of the filth covering me from head to toe. I removed my muddy, tattered polar boots before taking another step across the pretty blue area rug that covered most of the living room floorspace. I almost motioned for Lexie to do the same, but she was still barefooted.

  “You can shower first,” I said.

  “You sure?” she asked, even though her inner germophobe was clearly desperate to get sanitized.

  I nodded. “I want to put on some hot water for cocoa. You probably still have some clothes in the bedroom dresser.”

  Without saying another word, Lexie half ran through the bathroom door in front of us.

  I went into the little galley kitchen on the other side of the living room wall. The white-painted old cabinets had little flourishes from the seventies still hanging down from the top row. Fishing through them, I found exactly what I was looking for: instant hot chocolate mix with extra marshmallows. Normally, I preferred real cocoa with milk, but since nobody stayed up here, there weren't any perishables and I didn't want to risk the additional exposure of going down to the shop below.

  The bright red tea kettle was still sitting empty on the stainless steel stove, cheery and patient. As I waited for my water to boil, I ran my fingers over the notches in the butcher block counters from where I was learning to cook and couldn't manage to keep the knife on the cutting board. It surprised me that Grandma didn't have the counters sanded and refinished when they renovated the unit a few years ago, but I was glad that she didn't. Those marks now reminded me of brighter days.

  “All yours,” Lexie called out, spinning like a ballerina across the floor in her glee to be clean. “I was wondering where these jammies went.” She'd put on a pair of pink, flannel pajamas with little owls on them.

  I smiled at her demeanor and walked across the dining area and little wooden table to get to the bedroom. “When the kettle boils, would you pour me some cocoa? I've already got the mug set up on the counter.”

  She nodded and went to go plop on the couch.

  The master bedroom on the opposite end of the unit had a quaint charm that had always been inviting. The off-white walls and darker wooden flooring and molding made the space feel larger than it really was, so even though it could only fit the antique, four poster queen sized bed, its matching dresser, two nightstands, a small closet, and a standing mirror, it never felt cramped. The warm glow of the street lamp outside cast a golden glow on the room before I pulled the thick, quilted curtains closed and flipped the switch on the brass chandelier.

  After graduating from college, I'd moved most of my belongings here. But when Mom's breast cancer came back in her bones, I wanted to move back home and spend as much time with her as I could. Still, I left my lesser-favored clothing, books, and other things here. There were new toothbrushes here for both myself and Lexie.

  I fished out a purple nightgown, loose sports bra, and a pair of holey underwear that my frugal side just couldn't bear to throw away yet and went to go scrub my skin until it bled. The bathroom was similar in color to the bedroom with the same wooden floors and off white walls. A wooden vanity sink sat between the door to the bedroom and to the living room. Sleep wouldn't come easy tonight, even though I hadn't had a decent night of sleep in over a week, so I went into the medicine cabinet and took a double dose of an over-the-counter allergy pill before turning to the Mecca against the wall to my right: the white, claw-foot shower/tub.

  Peeling the grime-encrusted Arctic clothing off was more challenging than I thought since most of them were too big. I left them in the same dirty clothes pile as Lexie's against the wall and swore to myself that I would burn them tomorrow. I had no clue where I'd do it, but they needed to be incinerated from existence. The hot water felt so good on my skin that I moaned aloud and nearly melted into the bathtub.

  The darkness of the mystery crud and dried blood that flowed down my body stood out so starkly against my paleness. Here in the safety of my apartment, seeing the evidence of my nightmare tainting me sent a wave of goosebumps over my skin. I poured half a bottle of soap onto my loofah and scoured my skin until it burned and bled in spots.

  Most of my smaller injuries had already healed after a few hours, and though the deeper bruises and gashes were still painful, they were almost fully recovered. While the wound from whe
re Unus tore out a chunk of my scalp was most of the way healed, it was still raw enough that shampooing my hair felt like I was pouring acid onto it. But I had to get the dirt, blood, and mats out.

  I needed to be clean again. No matter how long it took, I had to get the darkness off of me. I had to. I had to. I had to!

  A shriek pierced my ears. All of the fear and pain from the last week came rushing back to me. Did Octavius find us so soon?

  Next thing I was aware of was my head hitting the hard, tiled wall as Lexie shook me violently. It took a moment for any sound other than that screaming to register.

  “Constance!” she yelled over and over again, fear widening her eyes to an almost cartoonish degree.

  Stilling, I took note of my surroundings. I was naked and in an undignified sprawl in the bottom of the tub. If it was anybody else, I would be humiliated right about now.

  “Good God, girl. I swear you sounded like that chick from Psycho. Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “You don't sound okay.”

  My voice creaked, “I'll be fine. I just need some sleep.”

  Looking dubious, Lexie turned the water off and passed me a towel out of the closet. “Your water is ready.”

  The kettle. That must have been the scream.

  I climbed out and dried off, but when I turned to set the towel in the dirty laundry pile, I noticed that the bathtub was pockmarked with hundreds of tiny dents, making the surface look like a golf ball's.

  I shook my head. I'd have to deal with it later. There was no way I could deal with it now. So I threw my clothes on in a daze. I just needed to sleep for a week and I would be fine.

  Lexie stood in the kitchen, pouring the near boiling water into my bunny mug. She passed it to me, but wouldn't look me in the eye.