From tangled roots come.., p.20
From Tangled Roots Come Twisted Wings, page 20
“Even I was young and handsome once, you know.”
“Leia certainly thought so.” I clap my hand over my mouth.
His mouth falls open. “What?”
I cringe. “Nothing?”
“I’m old enough to be her father.”
“Okay, but can we change the subject because she’s gonna kill me. It was when you looked younger anyway… at the hospital. She was right about you. She said we looked related, but I couldn’t see it at all.”
“It seems so long ago now.”
“A year,” I say.
“So much has happened since then.” He glances up at me. “We had a rocky start, but it’s not insurmountable, is it?”
“No. I mean, I still feel angry sometimes. Not at you exactly. I just get into a rut where I can’t stop thinking about everything I could’ve had.”
“Don’t let it sabotage what you have now… what you will have,” Daniel says. “Your roots are here. You just need to dig a little deeper.”
Gardening metaphors aside, he’s got a point. I’m still letting my insecurities rule me. But then, so is he.
“I will if you will,” I tell him.
He smiles. “And don’t go looking for yourself in places you’ve never been. Trust me, I tried. Who you come from is more important than where. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I went to Egypt and India, it just didn’t tell me anything about myself like I thought it would. It just told me who I could’ve been.” He rubs his thumb over my hand. “You’ll find yourself in the places you’ve yet to go, the adventures you’re yet to have, and among the people who love you.” He stares out the window just as my eyes start getting misty again. “It’s comforting… this place. Knowing Eden’s family has lived at the priory for so many generations makes everything solid.”
I swipe quickly at my eyes. “Yeah, they’re not going anywhere, are they?”
He smiles softly. “A safe place for roots.”
“I was thinking.” I rub my palms on my jeans. “Maybe we can get away from here sometimes. Just for a few hours. Just us. And Amethyst if she wants.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
“How far can you teleport?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“London?”
“What’s in London?”
“The theatre,” I say.
“You like shows?”
“Sure, but I was thinking we could just… sit on the roof.”
He barks out a troll laugh.
Back in my room, I write in my diary. I finally cracked its spine on the full moon when I woke in a post-dream haze and felt like breaking something. My full-moon dreams poured out of me that night, dreams of dukes and butchers, gods and kings, blood and vines, things worthy of cages. I’ve never drawn so much gore. I’m not a fan of gore; I’m not my sister.
Beneath a hundred swirly eyes, I write, I am unreachable. I write it ten times, then ten more because I can’t stop. I write it twenty-two times because twenty isn’t enough, and twenty-three is too many. I fill the rest of the page with overlapping garnets, remembering what Eden said when Michael sent my stone at Christmas. Shedding shame. Healing the self. Clarity. Openness. Love. I bleed across the page.
20
Behind the Knackered Washing Machine
In the weeks leading up to our birthday, Amethyst and I struggle to come up with celebration ideas we’re both happy with. She just wants Sean to be here and is rejecting everything because he can’t be. Eventually, we stop talking about it.
I’m getting better at Latin every day thanks to Magnus, who’s taking his job as mentor extra seriously. I’m working on an exercise he gave me when Amethyst barges in without knocking. I can’t even say anything.
She holds out a blue book. “I meant to give you this the other day.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“It’s got short bits in it… looks like poems. It’s Latin, right? I thought it might be a good thing to cut your teeth on, you know?” She bites her lip and stares out the window.
I sigh. “It’s from the library, isn’t it?”
She nods. “But it’s not a very big book. Eden won’t notice.”
“I don’t think she cares how big the books are, Am.”
“It’s got pictures,” she adds, grinning and wiggling it from side to side until I take it. “I know you like books with pictures.”
“You make me sound like a toddler.” I laugh anyway, then flick through the book. “Shit, these are gruesome.”
I run my fingers over the smooth cover where the title has worn off apart from the scuffed remains of a V and possibly an E. The book is ancient, handwritten in Latin, but it’s not like any kind of Latin I’ve seen so far. I’m still getting used to the sentence structure and bizarre punctuation, or lack thereof. I’m not used to the indents and margins yet. But this book? The phrases are short, expanding line by line into nonsense.
I stare at it for hours, translating as I go. And it reminds me of the time I got hooked on Hanjie puzzles. I will never get those hours back either.
“Look at this rubbish, Am. Blood will not be spilled. As tree Ana burns. Is Ana a type of tree? For those taken will not return. While tree Ana makes her home. For death will rise again. The ground will choke. Bile and bitter ash. In the earth’s shrouded pain.” I snort. “And this. Hands of unwitting angels. Break sacred ground in… servitude of darkness. Obscure the taste of angel’s sin.”
“Angel’s sin?” Amethyst frowns. “Can angels sin?”
“Who cares?”
She shrugs. “Does it matter if it’s nonsense? The point is to practise, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
Falsehood has no feet. She has only tongues.
A worthy god will not return. While angels walk the earth.
I hate that I can’t put it down.
Levitation is going even better than Latin. I still wouldn’t call it flying, probably because when I think of flying, I think of birds or Superman, but all I can do is shoot up in the air and hover about.
A week before my birthday, I call everyone out to the garden in the early morning fog and hover above it in Amethyst’s cloak, wailing and moaning like a ghost. Even Seth, who is now somewhat peeved at how quickly my powers are evolving, can’t stop laughing. Since then, I’ve been wafting around the house for fun.
Seth and Archer came back from OB’s allotment with a shedload of produce, so Amethyst is busy making pumpkin pies. I have a feeling I’ll be mightily sick of pumpkins before October is out, even if Archer does have a hundred-and-one ways to make them tasty.
Daniel is disappearing every other day or so, never letting on where he’s going, but I think Eden’s got him spying on the coven. For one thing, she avoids my eyes whenever I mention him being off on a job. For another, Magnus says his brother has stopped tailing them. Despite this, the map is filling up with little red pins.
From Syria, the coven took a surprising turn south into Africa, staying for a while in both Somalia and Namibia before veering north again and crossing the Red Sea.
“There have been some unusual sightings in these areas,” Eden says, charting a course from Saudi Arabia to Nepal with her finger.
“What sort of sightings?”
“The best description we have is slow-moving, unseasonal fogs. It seems they’re small and localised.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means they’re attracting wraiths,” she says. “It’s not uncommon for them to be attracted to vampires, but not usually in such volume for a coven so small, which leads me to believe the coven has grown. So, moving on… From Nepal, they travelled to Cambodia. A friend in the area has verified this. The journey through China and Russia was smooth and steady, no detours, but they did make one stop in China.” She swirls her finger above a spot on the map. “Somewhere around here. My best guess for their next stop is Alaska.”
“What are they doing?” I ask.
“We think it prudent to assume they’re looking for the earth trees.”
“You said the roots have been severed.”
“They have,” Eden says.
“Can they be reconnected?” Amethyst asks.
“In theory,” Eden says. “They can’t regrow because they were cut by an archangel’s sword, but they could be bonded to some other form of organic material. Vines, for instance.”
The night of Sean’s murder seeps into my consciousness. Mara standing on the hilltop pretending to be Amethyst. The pain in Sean’s voice when he thought she’d been turned. His sad smile when he heard her voice and saw my face. The swinging blade, the shaft of silver light. And binding him to the tree…
I close my eyes, and a ragged punch of nausea bears down on me. “Hair,” I whisper. “What about hair?”
“Hair is… a possibility,” Eden says.
“Oh, god.” Is that what’s she’s doing? What will happen if Mara connects the trees? Would she bring demons through? What’s her goal? What the hell does she want?
“What is it, Violet?” Magnus holds my hands. “Look at me. Count with me. Breathe with me.”
I lift my head to look at Magnus, my breath coming in heaving gasps. I count slowly in and out, allowing calmness to drift over me.
“Mara can control her hair,” I say. “I know it sounds bizarre, but she can make it grow… and whip it through the air, and she… she used it to bind Sean to the tree before…”
I watch Amethyst flinch away from the truth of that night on the hilltop.
“You didn’t mention it,” Magnus says.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. The days afterwards were a blur, and I thought… I thought the most important thing was the shapeshifting. I didn’t know… I didn’t know I hadn’t told you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Violet. I didn’t mean to imply you were keeping secrets.”
“What is it?” I ask. “How can she do that with her hair?”
“Marelocks,” Magnus says. “As you say, those who can conjure marelocks can control their hair for the purposes of binding, whipping, strangulation. They’re rare, gifted to a subset of vampires known as night hags.”
“Krisky is a night hag,” Amethyst says.
Eden collapses into the closest chair. “How could we have missed this? With two night hags, they’ll barely need to stop for rest.”
“You said she’d be weak.” My panic-high voice sounds all wrong. “The other entrance. Did you ever find the other entrance to the library?”
“I found it,” Seth says. “It’s close to the tree line, about halfway to the river. The entrance is secured now. I tracked it above ground and there are several vents, also secured.”
“The tunnel itself isn’t navigable,” Magnus adds. “It’s not caved in, but there’s barely space to crawl. I believe they modified it after the mausoleum was torn down to provide ventilation.”
“What do we do if she comes back, Magnus?” Eden whispers. “We need to call in reinforcements.”
Magnus nods. “I’ll call Michael.”
Nobody knows why Glenda called us to the kitchen, though Archer reckons she must’ve spotted one of us doing something we shouldn’t with her hawk eyes. Before anyone can ask why we’re here, Glenda’s voice drifts through the wall.
“In the utility room,” she calls.
We file into the small room just off the kitchen amusing Glenda, who’s folding laundry.
“What’s this then?” she asks, hoisting a laundry basket onto the worktop above a washing machine festooned with notices that read KNACKERED—DO NOT USE! Three more machines and two dryers stand in line next to it. Just how much washing does this poor woman do? I wonder if my battered old Converse were responsible for the death of the knackered washing machine.
Archer huffs. “You called us here.”
“Only because your father asked me to,” she says.
Eden nods at the wall above the battalion of washing machines and tumble dryers. “Open her up.”
Glenda’s eyebrows go hawkish. “You mean—” She nods at the wall and makes a twisting motion with her fingers, like she’s turning an invisible dial. “Already?”
“The wall, yes,” Eden confirms.
A twinkle brightens Glenda’s soft brown eyes, and a small smile tugs at her lips. “Time to break out the big guns, eh?” She drags the laundry basket to the other end of the worktop and wipes her palms on her apron.
“Guns?” the twins say, eyes alight as they grin at each other.
“Not those sorts of guns,” Eden says.
“Ordinary guns or not…” Glenda says, turning the dial on the knackered washing machine. “It’s about bloody time this lot saw the light of day.”
She pushes the washing machine, and the portion of wall behind it gives way, retreating into another room beyond the laundry walls and creating a doorway. Light fills the small room.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, shuffling into the room filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with weapons and ammunition. “Why do you have so many guns?”
“Is that a… blunderbuss?” Amethyst asks.
Glenda chuckles. “Close enough.”
“How the hell do these not qualify as that sort of gun?” Amethyst asks. “They’re exactly that sort of gun.”
“I meant they’re not designed to shoot animals or humans,” Eden says. “They’re designed for specific types of bullet. The kind engineered to kill vampires and their hybrids.”
The most surprising thing about this room is not the hundreds of boxes lining the shelves, or the open crates of silver bullets, or the host of ancient weapons hooked on the wall. The most surprising thing is that this little armoury is Glenda’s domain. Archer once joked that she was the only normal person in the house, but is she?
We follow Glenda to the clearing behind Magnus’ shed, where Magnus is already waiting with a crate of weapons at his feet.
Dewdrops cling to the dark green grass, which is already speckled gold and brown around the edge of the clearing, where the oaks, elders, and sycamores wear their autumn colours. The cold is biting, but the golden sun burns through the last of the morning mist, leaving the air crisp with a hint of mushroom.
There’s no sign of Seth yet, and Archer’s disappeared.
“This,” Glenda says, holding up the blunderbuss, “will lose accuracy at distance and is best for short range targets. It takes the short silver bullets, loaded like so.” She rams the almost egg-shaped bullets into the barrel, then pokes them down with a stick. “The longer bullets lurch, but you could shoot eyeballs out of this, and it wouldn’t mind.”
She puts her ear defenders on, hauls the butt to her armpit, and squeezes the trigger. The gun flares violently, and a faint whiff of burnt hair reaches my nostrils. Even wearing ear defenders, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head by a cannon.
“That could’ve gone better.” She squints at the slightly off-centre hole in the target pasted to a tree. “I’m out of practice.”
Magnus laughs. “You really should challenge old Amos.”
“I’d rather not. Listen up. For distance, we’ve got rifles. If your target fills the sight, you can shoot it. Again, only silver stakes—long ones this time. If you put wooden stakes in here, you’ll end up with splintered eyeballs.”
She hoists the rifle up, eye just inches from the scope, and fires at the furthest tree, hitting the painted target ring in the bullseye. She settles the empty gun on the ground and flicks her hair out of her eyes.
“These things are better suited to DIY.” Glenda holds a brassy nail gun in each hand, a disgusted look on her face. “Close range only. Very close. Straight against the chest. The shot is angled, so it doesn’t hit the ribcage, but you’ve got to get it up in there. You don’t want one of these ricocheting off any bones, not least because vampires have a thicker bone plate covering the heart.” She stares into the distance for a bit. “It’s easier to just get the buggers from behind. These’ll take wood or silver, but silver works better on the belt.”
We take turns with each of the guns. Nobody is even pretending we’ll escape without a fight anymore. The coven will be back, and we’ll need to defend ourselves.
Ben and Ezra have no choice but to prefer rifles because Magnus insists the twins will be as far away from the fight as possible with no use for short-range weapons. I think he’s kidding himself. A gun is a gun to the twins. After an hour’s practice, they’re hitting the painted targets about ninety percent of the time.
I can’t even hit the tree they’re painted on. It’s not that I can’t see them clearly enough. I can see every rut in the drive through the sparser trees. I can see the last of the blackberries hanging onto the hedges lining the eastern end of the drive, and rabbits bouncing around the south field through a dark gap in the trees. And I can see Desi balancing on the wobble-board, silently judging me. Nothing about my enhanced eyesight makes me better at shooting.
I’m not even that surprised, because when Seth tried to teach me to shoot at the fair last year, my shooting skills were terrible. I just thought with all the other skills I’ve been learning, I’d get good at shooting too. But I’m just kidding myself. I only hit a tree once, and it wasn’t even the one I was aiming for. I keep that to myself because Amethyst is already reluctant to hand over the blunderbuss.
“We have more,” Glenda says. “The blunderbuss is Archer’s favourite too. Well, it was until recently.”
“Won’t this be expensive?” I ask. “All this silver stuck in trees.”
“We’ll get them back out,” Glenda says. “Besides, they’re not completely made of silver. They’d be too soft.”
For the life of me, I can’t get the hang of the blunderbuss. I advance so far towards the tree before I manage a solid hit to the target that I probably could’ve reached it with a nail gun.
I hand it back to Amethyst. “You keep it.”
