A Death of Music Read online

“I think the angels should spend more time on earth before they judge it,” Willow said. “That’s your mistake.”

  He went still for a moment, as if absorbing their words. When he spoke again, he had calmed, and the beatific mask was back in place. “Oh, but you are a mistake. One I will pay for dearly. But—” he bowed his head a moment— “one I will amend soon. You see, even if you have since turned on us, your part was already played that day in Hawk’s Hollow. You set things in motion, and when the remaining seals are broken, you’ll no longer be needed.”

  The angel turned, and his wings flared out around him once again. “Soon. It will all end soon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Felicity

  In the dream she was reading. She had that awareness, as one sometimes has, that she was dreaming, while simultaneously not being able to wake up. She also knew as she dreamed that she’d had this dream many times before.

  The book in her hands is bound in rust-colored leather with a tree embossed on the cover. Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology. The tree that holds the cosmos.

  And as she turns the pages of the book, she realizes that she’s not sitting in her bedroom in her parents’ house. The big house with the white columns and the marble fireplace and the fancy furniture. She’s sitting in a palace made entirely of ice.

  Out the window is a great city, and beyond that, a land of blue and green, sea and meadows. Lush but ice cold. Stark but beautiful. As opposite her red, dusty homeland as possible. So far it might as well be another world entirely. Music plays in the distance, soft and sweet.

  The pages keep turning beneath her fingers, as if moving of their own accord. She knows what’s coming next and she wants to stop but she can’t.

  The wolves come first. It starts as a distant shaking, like an earthquake. Except the vibration doesn’t come from the ground, it comes from the sky. Then comes a great rush of wind, and twin howls shatter the stillness. Across the turquoise swath of perfect blue comes a black beast as big as a mountain. Paws the sizes of small cottages, tail the length of two sequoia trees, teeth the size of a horse.

  The beast opens its massive jaws and swallows the sun in one ferocious bite.

  Darkness falls like a guillotine.

  Wind continues to howl and now the darkness moves. Felicity can barely see the wolf, except for its glowing emerald eyes. Another joins it, and then a third. All across the sky, stars begin to blink out. Over the palace, the moon hangs like a ripe melon, half full. Until it is devoured, too. And then there is only fathomless blackness.

  The smooth blue of the sea is now broken by waves that curl hungrily toward the city. From the depths bursts a writhing blue serpent, and it floods the land and spits venom across the earth. It disappears and reemerges in a new place, the sea reclaiming the earth more and more each time. Slowly it makes its way toward the city.

  And in the wake of the wolves comes a flying ship with gray sails holding hundreds of dead, decaying bodies. Their screams of torment mingle with the screams of the people in the city below as the seas rise higher, and the giant wolves devour everything in the sky. The ship circles the city, and the tree which rises behind it.

  The tree that holds the cosmos. The tree that is life.

  It begins to shake and shudder, and mountains collapse all across the land. The city and the palace, too, great chunks of ice shattering and sliding to the earth. From within the palace comes a stream of gods and goddesses to battle the monsters. But they will not prevail. They know this. Because Ragnarök is the end, and the void is soon to follow.

  And Felicity knows that they failed. That she failed. The sixth seal has been broken. And soon it will be as if nothing had ever existed.

  She sees the void, or rather, she feels it, right before she awakens. The endless stretch of it. The nothingness. All of history unraveled, undone, unmade. Just like the Riders.

  Felicity jerked out of her dream. It was so dark that for a moment she thought it had already happened. The end of it all. But then she heard Dynah’s soft snoring a few inches away, coming from the cell next to her. She laid there until her heart stopped trying to escape her chest.

  She’d dreamed the same dream every time she fell asleep for almost a week now. Well, the timeframe being a guess. With only the light of the torch, she didn’t really know. She knew it couldn’t be quite a week yet, because when six days had elapsed since Sekhmet broke the fifth seal, they would break the sixth, and her dream would no longer be a dream.

  They’d tried everything they could think of to escape. It was limited, admittedly, with the magical ropes keeping their power at bay. Attempts to find weaknesses in their cells had been met with failure. Trying to steal the keys of the guards had earned them a terrible lash of magic from the demons. Plus, they were growing weaker day by day, given only the tiniest amounts of food and water. Just enough to keep them alive.

  But as much as all of that pained her, pained them all, what tormented her the most was that dream. The looming death of the world. It seemed the worst kind of irony that she had studied Ragnarök at her mother’s bidding, that she knew exactly how the world would end. She used to think the Norse tales the most fantastical of them all. Wondered, even, how people could believe such fanciful tales.

  Now she knew it was all real. All the legends. All the myths.

  How foolish they’d all been, not to believe.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Dynah

  In the cell next to Felicity, Dynah didn’t dream exactly. She saw her parents, her father mostly. Dead and rotting, as he had been the times she’d seen him before. Since they’d been down here in the dark, he’d come more and more frequently. She was fairly certain that he was just a figment of her imagination, or rather, a manifestation of her guilt. But as he always reminded her, she could control the physical forms of the dead. Not their spirits. So she wondered if it could really be him, haunting her for what she’d done to him.

  When she jolted awake from yet another conversation with daddy dearest, she bumped her head on the wall of her cell. Felicity reached her hands around through the bars at the front and Dynah took them. They’d started doing that after the first couple of days, since nightmares of one sort or another plagued them both.

  “Same dream?” Felicity asked softly in the dark.

  “Yeah,” Dynah responded.

  They fell into silence for a time.

  Felicity had discovered on the second day of captivity that the unique magic between the two of them still worked, even wearing their glowing bonds. They had spent hours touching palms, feeling the sparks move across their skin, had even worked up to being able to send small pulses of magic to each other.

  They also discovered that their elemental magic worked. Dynah couldn’t do anything, what with stars being in short supply down here in the dungeon, and Felicity couldn’t do much with stone and metal, other than moving a bit of dirt between the blocks. But Penelope was able to cloak herself in darkness. It was how they had tricked the guards and stolen the keys on the third day.

  Dynah wondered at it all, where this power came from. Clearly it wasn’t their magic as Riders, since their bonds seemed made specifically for that. Indigo and Sassafras had said they were the first of their kind. Perhaps Heaven imbuing humans with the powers of the Riders had unintended consequences. Or perhaps it was something else entirely. She had learned in a very short period of time that absolutely nothing was impossible.

  “What do you think it will be like?” Felicity whispered, interrupting her thoughts. “The pool of blue fire?”

  “I don’t think it will be like anything,” Dynah said. “I think we’ll just vanish into it. Poof. Done.”

  “I think it will be like burning witches at the stake,” Willow called from across the dungeon. “We will feel it, and we will scream. I hope our screams haunt them for all eternity.”

  “That’s hideously morbid,” Penelope said, her tone thick with disgust. “Honestly, Willow.
”

  “She asked,” Willow said, a shrug in her tone.

  “It’s probably a better death than the rest of humanity will receive,” Felicity said, and Dynah squeezed her fingers.

  Silence fell between them all for a few minutes.

  Felicity spoke again. Dynah figured she was trying not to fall asleep again, back into the same old dream. “What would each of you want, if we could go back to our normal lives? If the Apocalypse was reversed?”

  “You know mine already: a big ranch with lots of horses,” Dynah said. “But no husband. I’ll make my own fortune.”

  “Well, we have to save Atsa first, of course. Then, I would spend more time with my clan,” Penelope said. “Learn what it means to be part of the Navajo people. And I’ll practice our magic until I can use it for good things. To help people.”

  “I would travel the world,” Willow said. “Well, anywhere I could take Bullet with me. Maybe ride down through South America. Up through Canada to Alaska. And Australia. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia.”

  “What about you?” Dynah asked Felicity.

  Felicity was silent for a few long moments. “Well, first I want to figure out this spell in Sekhmet’s book. Then, I just want to write my stories. Live somewhere where no one looks at me funny.” She took a deep breath, paused. “And find someone I love, who loves me in return. Not some arranged marriage.”

  “It seems years since we left our lives behind,” Dynah said. “Everything is so…”

  She didn’t have to finish. They all knew.

  A whoosh of air suddenly moved through the dungeon and the torch on the wall flickered. Dynah’s heart climbed into her mouth. She knew that sound. Had been dreading it.

  The sound of wings.

  Zane stepped out of the darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Willow

  “You,” Willow growled.

  Zane stepped forward, the torchlight making his wings look golden. He stared back at her stoically, his blue eyes dispassionate. “It’s almost time,” he said. “Can’t you feel it?”

  And if Willow hadn’t been going crazy from being held in a dark hole for nearly a week with barely any food or water, she was sure she would have felt the next phase of the Apocalypse drawing inexorably closer.

  “Are you here to take us to our… unmaking?” Penelope asked.

  Willow was impressed by the steadiness of her friend’s voice.

  Zane raked his eyes over them all, and then, with a wave of his hand, Felicity, Dynah, and Penelope all slumped to the ground.

  “What did you do to them?!” Willow shrieked.

  Zane raised a hand. “They are unharmed. Sleeping only.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He was silent for several long moments. “I came to say goodbye.”

  Willow made a guttural sound in her throat. “Really? Isn’t that breaking some kind of rule?”

  His eyes found hers and held them. “No. They’re breaking the seal any minute now. And then I have to escort you four to Heaven. I merely came early.”

  “You mean escort us to the pool of blue flame. Where the Riders are made. And unmade. You came to say goodbye, because you’re leading me to my slaughter.” Her gaze burned into him until he looked away.

  “I didn’t want this to happen,” he said softly. He turned in a slow circle, looking up at the ceiling as if praying, then stepped up to her cell, took a bar in each hand. “You were supposed to accept your powers and do your bidding. But you—you—were just too stubborn.”

  She looked up at him from her seat on the floor. “Alinar really picked the wrong women for the job.” And then she laughed.

  Zane winced.

  “Would you rather I be frightened? Would you rather I beg?” Willow wasn’t sure that she should get up now, as weakened as she felt, but she forced herself to her feet and crossed the room until they stood inches apart, separated only by the metal. “That’s not who I am. And it never will be.”

  “I know,” he said. “I think I knew, deep down, all along.”

  “But you couldn’t tell your boss he was wrong about us. Risk his anger.”

  “You’re just a human, though,” he said, shoving the word out as if it pained him. “You’re not supposed to be this strong.”

  “You clearly need to spend more time with humanity.”

  Silence fell between them, though their eyes said a lot in that silence.

  “I guess,” Willow finally said, stepping up and lacing her fingers around the bars between Zane’s hands, “the interesting question is this: why did you want so badly to say goodbye?”

  Zane opened his mouth to reply, but Willow realized something in that exact moment.

  The thing that Willow realized, as she felt a pulse of magic in the palms of her hands, was that her elemental power, like Felicity’s earth, and Dynah’s stars, and Penelope’s darkness, the one they had all thought was fire, was in fact not fire at all.

  It was metal.

  Willow bent the bars of the prison cell as if they were butter, creating a wide hole between them. Zane’s eyes widened and he lunged for her, but she dove through the hole, knocking into him and yanking free a three-foot length of metal as she did. They fell to the floor, Willow on top. She brought the bar against his head with all her physical strength, and a good bit of magic. His head lolled to the side. He was out cold.

  Willow was more than a bit impressed with herself, but there wasn’t time to gloat. She ran to Dynah’s cell and pulled back the bars, slapped her hard on the face to wake her.

  “What?” Dynah said groggily.

  “Get up! Now!”

  She repeated with Felicity and Penelope.

  “How did you?” Penelope trailed off, staring in wonderment at the pieces of metal strewn about the dungeon.

  “My elemental power,” Willow said. “Our powers, outside of being Riders. And that’s how we’re going to get out of here.”

  “But what about these?” Dynah lifted her bound wrists.

  “We’ll worry about them later.”

  Willow grabbed another length of metal and ran for the steps, hopping over Zane’s prone body. She took them two at a time, adrenaline giving her strength where she hadn’t thought she had any left. That, and the aftereffects of her magic. Her magic. Not magic from Heaven.

  They didn’t encounter any demons until they reached the courtyard. Willow found their surprised expressions immensely satisfying. It was nighttime, and the stars shone down on them, the air icy. Holding the metal bar from her cell in both hands, she wielded it like a sword, charging the closest guard.

  The metal seemed to conform to her every wish. She could feel it speaking to her, as she had the moment she’d touched it down in the dungeon. It bent when she wanted it to bend, and it was strong when she wanted it to be strong. In her hands now, it felt like she had the strength of mountains. When she swung it into the demons, they flew across the courtyard as if they weighed nothing.

  But there were a lot of demons. Dozens of them. Even with her Herculean strength, they were coming at her faster than she could fend them off. Glowing goat eyes and horns and razor-sharp claws surrounded her. She spun, faster and faster, but they had her surrounded. The heel of her boot slipped on the rocks, and she fell beneath them.

  A moment later, the demons all flipped on their backs as the rocks of the courtyard rippled. Willow’s head whipped to the side and she saw Felicity crouched on the ground a few feet away. She was disrupting the earth under the pavers. It looked as if a giant mole had tunneled beneath their feet.

  And then she disappeared.

  Willow blinked. She realized that Dynah and Penelope were gone as well. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. Her friends wouldn’t just leave her, would they?

  A hand clapped over her mouth and she blinked out of sight. She couldn’t see the hand, but she could feel that it was one. She was pulled to her feet and led across the courtyard. The demons had all recove
red from having the rug pulled out from under them, and they took up pursuit.

  Willow saw that the portcullis was open just the barest bit at the bottom, a mere twelve inches. When they reached it, Penelope had no choice but to drop her hand, which also lowered the cloak of night she’d wrapped around them both. They dove to the ground and rolled under the portcullis. On the other side, Dynah and Felicity let go of the lever they’d been holding, and it crashed back down.

  Willow thought sharp, and the metal in her hand bent and formed into a blade. With one mighty stroke, Willow hacked the handle off the portcullis lever. Then she tucked her makeshift blade into her belt, and they ran as if hell were behind them.

  They hadn’t made it a thousand feet when a figure stepped out into the road ahead of them. Willow recognized his silhouette instantly. The bounty hunter.

  “Don’t try to stop us, cowboy,” she growled. She pulled her blade again. “You got your money.”

  He let out a low whistle, and Willow heard a familiar neigh. Bullet. Her heart stopped.

  “I reckon ya don’t need to be rescued. But I thought ya might want your mounts back,” the cowboy said in his slow drawl.

  “I don’t understand,” Dynah said. “Why help us now?”

  The bounty hunter didn’t take his eyes off of Willow. “I was paid to capture ya and turn ya over. The terms ditn’t state what happened after that.”

  “Answer her question,” Willow said through gritted teeth. “People don’t do things out of the goodness of their heart. What are you up to?”

  He looked down, brushed his fingers across the brim of his hat. “These horses are worth more’n all the gold in the world,” he said. “But I couldn’t bring myself to keep ‘em. To leave ya stranded.”

  Willow stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

  The cowboy finally looked back up. “I tried to tell myself it watn’t true, tried to deny it, but you look just like her. Twins almost.”

  “Who?” Willow snapped.