The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Read online

  The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker

  Leanna Renee Hieber

  LOVE SPELL NEW YORK CITY

  The Enemy Triumphant

  “It started with my bride—she whom I took rightfully for my own. She was made of feminine joy, loyalty and youth. She was a creature of light. We were meant to be. We make the necessary pair, she, the light to my shadow!” Darkness’s beautiful face looked pained before it again became a skull. The skull grimaced. “She already had a lover, stupid girl. I burned him to a crisp. But he lived on in human pawns, and her damnable heart would never surrender.”

  Percy didn’t bother to hide her disturbed expression. “What happened?”

  “Muses followed what was left of him, seeing themselves as his votaries. They jumped into human flesh to form a rather troublesome cult. My sustenance is the sorrow and misery gathered unto me by restless minions I send to mortal earth. But the blasted Guard sends them back empty, starving me, while they live on! But in the end, all human flesh must come through here. Even they.”

  Percy gulped. “And then?”

  “I’m supposed to let any who wish move on to Peace.” He waved his hand in disgust. “Not them. I’ve collected them all into woe.”

  To Ronan Harris, VNV Nation, For encouraging us all to “Remain where there is light.”

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Excerpt

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  INTERACT WITH DORCHESTER ONLINE!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Praise

  Other Books By Leanna Renee Hieber

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  A most critical evening in the Year of Our Lord 1888

  Beatrice Tipton knew a few things as she stood with her eyes closed at the edge of the undiscovered country: She knew that her life had been sacrificed to what she hoped would indeed prove to be a greater good. She knew her corset was laced too tight beneath the sensible layers of her dress—she should’ve thought to bring a traveling cloak, for the Whisper-world was colder than she’d expected. And she knew she was now something like what she’d once fought as the leader of The Guard. She would not be surprised when she opened her eyes and saw other ghosts; they had been something of a profession. What she hadn’t expected so soon was to hear the scream of her husband.

  They had gone into the Whisper-world side by side, hand in hand, to face the next grim adventure. They couldn’t be separated so soon, not again…Her eyes shot open. She stood at one end of a long grey corridor of stone. The ceiling was impenetrable darkness, its peak unseen—perhaps it had no rafters—with charcoal clouds heavy in periodic intervals, like trembling chandeliers of mist. These roiled with subtle, unsettling shapes, hissing with soft sighs and eternal regrets. Water lapped at the toe of her sturdy boot; an impossibly black, onyx liquid as unwelcoming and seemingly alive as the mist.

  At the other end of the dripping corridor was Ibrahim, wearing the fine tunic in which he died. Once full of the rich honey brown hues of his native Cairo, he was now fitted with the greyscale palette of a ghost, yet even in death Beatrice was struck by his handsome, distinguished figure. She glanced down to find that the gathered folds of her linen dress and its cloth-covered buttons, once beige, were also grey. Her skin was solidly, sickly white. Death had dulled once-bright colours, replacing them with a wash of grim hues that only darkened as the corridor drove inward toward the bosom of the Whisper-world.

  “Bea,” Ibrahim murmured. The water between their ghostly forms began to spread and deepen. Though it was perhaps the depth of a wide puddle, it felt like an ocean now separated them, and an absurd fear gurgled in Beatrice’s ghostly veins, a fear reflected on Ibrahim’s face.

  “Come back across, love,” Beatrice said brightly, swallowing sudden terror, gesturing to her side of the water. “Our Lady said the doors are to be knit here from the periphery and I’ll need your help. I cannot do without my Intuition—my second,” she said with a rallying smile. “Come take my hand, it’s only a bit of water.”

  Ibrahim had no time to agree, or to join her. And it was no mere water. The Whisper-world was bent on separating, on isolating, and it would do its job. The water rose unnaturally and beat him back: horrific horse heads capping waves, fanged and red-eyed. Beatrice would close the distance, but the water whispered things. Shaking off the soul-chilling misery it wished to impart, she darted forward and flung out her hand. A trickle of blue flame, the only spot of colour in this grey purgatory, leaped forth but died quickly. She might once have been the leader of The Guard, but her power had long since gone to another.

  She cursed herself. The Guard had been warned they might be attacked entering the Whisper-world and made captive to Darkness; she should have been prepared. Powerless, they would likely be imprisoned someplace beyond imagining. Prophecy’s war was yet to be waged. Had the goddess left them entirely helpless?

  “Ibra—” she started to cry out, steeling herself to wade through the nightmare, but a hand clamped over her mouth and she was pressed into the shadows and against a wall where insidious moisture seeped through her lace collar, past her pinned-up locks to kiss her neck. A strong man held her fast, and while Beatrice prided herself on being a spirited fighter, she struggled in vain.

  Ibrahim did not again call her name as he was driven into darkening depths. As frightened as he seemed, perhaps he intended subtlety, keeping her safe by not alerting the agents of Darkness to her presence. The cresting waves of horse heads gnashed around him, nipping bits of his death grey flesh. He ducked beneath his arms and blurted out a familiar stanza, in Arabic: “‘To us a different language has been given, and a place besides heaven and hell. Those whose hearts are free have a different soul, a pure jewel excavated from a different mine.’” Oft used by him, her Guard’s Intuition, the ancient Sufi words ever confounded misery’s minions. The monstrous forms hesitated.

  “I’ll see you again, my love,” Ibrahim called. “I choose to trust in you, Our Lady and in Prophecy!” He turned and fled farther into the labyrinth, leading the terrors on a desperate chase.

  Beatrice sobbed against the palm of her unseen captor, her lover’s words ringing in her ears. How odd for Ibrahim to have found faith in this terrible transition. Or perhaps he said those words—once her Guard’s favourite verse—only for her, as a reminder to keep faith in the tasks to come.

  “Let him go, leader, we cannot help him here alone,” her captor said. His voice was gruff and heavily accented. Beatrice dimly recognized it as old Irish or Scots. Gaelic. “Help London’s Guard and they can help him. You know what to do.”

  The man spun out into the dim light of the corridor, kept her pinned in his grasp but away from the wall. Immediately she could breathe more easily. Whisper-world moisture, it would seem, was a potent poison. Beatrice stared into the grey eyes of a rugged spirit once as handsome as a warrior god, fabric draped over his firm, bare chest, metal bands and leather thongs encircling his arms. His hair was a grey mane down his back. He took h
is hand from her mouth.

  “Who are you and what do you know about The Guard?” Beatrice hissed.

  The man held up a pendant. It was a plain locket that sparked a familiar blue at the edges. His palm glowed with warm, pale light before fading, an echo of his power lingering in faint traces. Beatrice gritted her teeth. “So you were a Healer. One of us. What does that mean to me now? I gave up the Grand Work years ago—to the very London set you mention. Can’t you just leave me to aid my comrade?” She made to follow Ibrahim.

  The man held her fast. “Hardly. My name is Aodhan, and Our Lady said to watch for you, Beatrice Tipton. Your work is far from done.”

  Beatrice scowled. “Yes, the doors and all that. Don’t you think I knew she would be of age, don’t you think, even without powers, we sensed it was time, that our mortal coils failed and we stepped into this despicable place, sacrificed to the Work once more? Ibrahim can help—”

  “He’ll be corralled with the others. For now, you must go and make sure of Prophecy. Otherwise none of us will ever be free. Take this. Our Lady saved it for you. It holds power you’ll need.”

  The man clasped the plain locket around her neck. She didn’t need it opened to know its contents: some part of the ash of Phoenix, held aside from his burial chamber. Its hazy blue nimbus was indication enough. A sparkling, dancing tendril of fire snaked out from the pendant and kissed her throat. She opened her palm. An orb of cerulean flame appeared, steady, hers again to command. It was a comfort.

  Beatrice furrowed her brow and looked again at Aodhan. “How is it you weren’t imprisoned like the others?”

  “Impossible love opens doors and frees souls,” Aodhan murmured, and gestured behind him.

  She turned and her heart seized. There was an open portal to England. Beatrice could have recognized her native country anywhere, the patchwork sounds of London’s cluttered brick lanes, the gritty smell of industry hanging thick in the grey air. She loved and hated it all at once, but it was colourful, scented and alive, and she’d had no idea how much she could yearn for it in death. In view was a tall, modestly dressed woman in long wool skirts, a cloak and dark blonde hair tucked haphazardly beneath a plain bonnet, walking along cobblestones in Bloomsbury, turning down an unmarked street toward a Romanesque fortress of red sandstone that Beatrice knew well: Athens Academy. The woman hesitated, her fair face troubled, before lifting her skirts and trotting up the stairs.

  “I’ve long been tied to Jane and her world,” Aodhan continued. “Tied more to her there than myself here.” Jane, the woman Beatrice recognized as the Healer of the modern Guard, heaved open the hefty doors of Athens and vanished within. “And so must you be tied to her world, and to Our Lady, until the vendetta ends.”

  Beatrice held up a hand. She hated being reminded of duty. “I know I’ve no choice in this, so I’ll not fight you. I’ll fight for Ibrahim, and for the hope that Our Lady of Perpetual Trouble will have found her destined love.” Muttering, she took a step toward London. She turned back, her hard face softening. “But how is she? Our Lady? Is she with the good professor, well and happy, as they both should be?”

  Aodhan’s chiseled face darkened. “You’ve not seen her?”

  “Foundations in place, our Guard returned to Cairo, retired until in death our services would be once more called upon. Our Lady didn’t want us to interfere once the course was set; we were to leave them to it. Isn’t the girl at the academy?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think The Guard has found her. All I see is a darkening sky, and if they fail”—he gestured behind him, toward the terrible labyrinth of darkness—“misery will bleed with no suture to stop it. The pins loosened, the veil thin…we’re about to split open. Not just London, but everywhere. And you know we can’t part the veil until we’re ready, when the doors belong to Light and—”

  Beatrice sighed. “Indeed. It seems Our Lady left me all the responsibility. Keep an eye on Ibrahim, will you?” She choked, her emotions getting the better of her. “We fought too hard for too long to be separated again.”

  Aodhan interjected with sincere empathy, “The Grand Work has never been easy for anyone.”

  Beatrice nodded a curt good-bye and turned toward England. She closed her eyes, and the shadows receded. The incessant murmurings of misery shifted into a cacophony of clattering city sounds; a whiff of roasted chestnuts from a vendor down a bustling lane was followed by a passing factory-borne mist that tasted slightly sulfuric. The air was warmer. Late fall was turning cold in London, but anything felt warmer than the world of the dead. Opening her eyes, she saw the formidable red sandstone edifice that was her destination.

  She looked down and frowned. Her feet floated above the cobblestones. Mundane particulars she’d taken for granted: the firm, solid press and the sound of her boots against stone. And while still greyscale, she was now transparent—invisible to most.

  Floating up the sandstone stairs, Beatrice braced herself. She wafted through the hefty front door of Athens Academy, a building that the goddess and her Guard helped secure years ago. “Hmm,” she breathed, looking back at the door. “At least that didn’t hurt.”

  Wandering the stately halls, down marble floors and through Romanesque arches, passing in front of oblivious students, Beatrice sought familiar faces. She wondered if she’d recognize the current Guard. None of them had known her. None of them were supposed to. She assumed, however, she’d recognize their leader, Professor Alexi Rychman, and wondered if he’d grown into the intense and formidable man his youthful self had foreshadowed. Beatrice’s own Guard had served an unprecedented short time before Alexi’s took over. Her personal service, however, had been extended. Not that the deathly-pale mortal girl who now embodied her Lady, one Persephone Parker, would remember anything. The goddess was dead. Young Miss Percy Parker, however, should be very much alive.

  It was alarming, then, when Beatrice swept through the infirmary to find the girl in question. Beatrice had only seen her as a snowy-skinned baby, but she’d grown into an eerily beautiful young woman, her white hair splayed like glistening spider silk about her moist face. She lay unconscious, draped in sheets as white as her skin, too much like a lovely marble statue laid atop a tomb.

  “Oh dear,” Beatrice murmured, floating near. The girl’s eyes shot startlingly open, bright white orbs centred with sparkling sapphire. Beatrice retreated to watch and ascertain. She’d only interfere if she must. Fate and Prophecy could only be manipulated so much. Mortals had to make choices, else their destined paths would never take. But this was not a good sign.

  A nurse fussed over her, but the girl would not be dissuaded from rising.

  “I need a breath of air,” Percy murmured, trotting awkwardly to the terrace doors.

  Beatrice followed but stopped as the girl choked. A man strolled below, and Percy had seized upon him. Beatrice recognized him, too. Tall and striking, with tousled black locks that brushed his shoulders in the wind that buffeted his sharp features, Alexi Rychman had grown only more compelling through the years. His black robe billowed about him, a crimson cravat tight around his throat, his presence utterly magnetic, though his dark eyes were murky with conflict. Beatrice wasn’t worried that Percy stared at him with what was obviously a yearning, aching heart. That was as expected: she should love and ache for him. The problem was the woman who strolled beside Alexi, her arm in his. The woman was a paragon of beauty—save for the fact that her head was wreathed in serpents.

  As powerful as he was, Professor Alexi Rychman didn’t seem to realize he was courting mythic disaster. The ghosts hovering about the courtyard were murmuring to beware. “You’ve got it all wrong,” Beatrice called out. But Alexi could not hear her, just as she herself could not hear spirits until death, and Percy was too absorbed in the sight below to notice. The confused and stricken look on the girl’s face was heartbreaking.

  The Gorgon’s head of snakes turned their flaming red eyes and forked tongues up at the terrace. Percy loosed a heartre
nding wail and ran back into the room. “Miss Parker?” The nurse rushed over and returned Percy to her bed. “Poor dear, your friend said she would return to sit with you soon.”

  “Yes,” Beatrice murmured, “you need a friend. You need people to fight with and fight for. You’re a target if you’re all alone, my lady—The Guard should be at your side!”

  Percy’s eyes rolled and her breath hitched. “All the creatures of the Old World, and nothing to protect me! The spirits are crying out, but he can’t hear the warning…” She fainted. The nurse murmured benedictions, pressing a cool cloth to her chalky forehead.

  Beatrice bit her lip and flew to the edge of the bed, her panic mounting. “My lady, wake up! Don’t you understand what’s about to happen? Every Guard that’s ever been is in peril, your world is about to be overrun! Fly to that professor of yours and make it right, or all our love will be in vain, in this world and the next!” She tried to float down, to shake the death-pale girl, but her transparent hands gained no purchase. Cursing, she flew from the room.

  Floating was quite useful in getting places quickly, and in a mere moment she arrived in the grand, colonnaded upstairs foyer of Promethe Hall, staring down at a mosaic eagle and an inscription. “‘So knowledge bears the Power and the Light…’” Beatrice closed her eyes and hoped whatever was left of Phoenix was listening. Clutching the locket she begged the stones, “Please help! She needs your help; she doesn’t know the power she wields. It’s eating her alive not rousing her to action. None of us has ever needed you more!”

  She felt something tickle her hand, and she opened her eyes. A wispy feather of blue flame floated before her. It sparkled, and power enervated her. “Oh, that does feel good,” she breathed. Rich life force surged through her body, and she hadn’t realized until that moment the extent to which death had limited her senses. While the mortal incarnation of their goddess might not be faring well down the hall, the hallowed fire of The Guard was alive and well in the bricks of Athens.