Nox

By Rae Else

The clans, covens, and courts will be unified once the race that was cloven is too.

 

Jess escaped the Triodia Penitentiary and slew her uncle, Lorenzo, the Remus Alpha. Although she is free, she i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anchorite Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781916904934

Rae Else

Rae Else is an Urban Fantasy author, most at home in the spaces between reality and the imaginary. When in the real world, she resides with her husband in Plymouth. The Arete Trilogy is her Young Adult, Urban Fantasy debut. Her upcoming series, The Dark Between, is a decadently dark YA Fantasy, featuring a whole cast of paras-shifters, vamps, witches, mages, fae ... and lots of soul magic.Rae studied Classics at university and a lot of her stories draw on mythology and ancient worlds. In her twenties, Rae worked as a teacher and now writes full time. When not reading or writing, Rae loves to scuba dive and sail. She finds the big blue to be like a good book-a portal to a different world.The Lost Assassin novella and two companion e-shorts to The Arete Series can be downloaded for FREE at http://raeelse.co.uk

Book preview

1

Initiation

Jess stepped along the passageway, eyeing the marble statues flanking it. The effigies were of a winged woman and a skull-faced man: personifications of the Night and Netherworld. Their renderings haunted every corner in Castle Nox.

Jess entered the deepest bowels of the castle: the crypt. And stopped. Flame danced across the surface of a slick pool as if the water had been laced with oil and set alight. In her month here, she had seen many Enodian portals. There were two types, Netherworld and Night. This was a Netherworld portal. A portal in water that opened into the Between—a threshold you could travel through to another body of water on Earth. A couple of months ago, when she’d first seen such a portal open in Maine, she’d thought she’d gone mad. Now, the fiery water hardly caused her to bat an eye.

Jess did wonder why it was open. She tried to keep her distance from portals whenever she could. The first one she’d gone through had taken her to the Triodia Penitentiary, where she’d been imprisoned for a month. But that wasn’t why she avoided them. Ever since getting to Castle Nox, she’d felt overcome by the presence of the restless dead, the sluagh. The sluagh tethered to the castle itself were drawn to portals. Theo had explained that they patrolled its boundaries but were often attracted to the soulfire of open portals. The sluaghs’ sulphury fragrance flooded her senses, making her unable to focus on anything else.

She fought her rising anxiety.

Theo’s note said to meet him here.

Her heart sped up. Perhaps Astra, their Unseelie fae friend, was traveling through the Between from the fae land Umbra. Jess’s skin prickled with anticipation. But then she realized it was much too late for that. The clock in her room said it was just before three in the morning. Fae could only travel at dawn and dusk from Umbra to Earth when this world was itself in a between state.

Her heart fell. The thought of Astra was routed in wanting news about Rune. He’d left for Umbra the day after they’d reached Castle Nox. Jess had only had one talk with him in Braemar, the village nearest here. He’d gone to see old vamp friends. The only ones who might be able to solve the mysteries surrounding Jess.

How I wish there was news already.

She pushed away the stray thoughts that threatened to take hold. Ignoring the sulfurous aroma and glowing portal, Jess spied something beyond the pool: four horizontal figures. In the murk of the tomb, their skin appeared like marble. A chill crawled down her spine, alerting her to the fact that these weren’t carvings. They were corpses.

Jess’s mouth dried. She noticed the gaggle of be-robed figures farther back in the crypt.

Wait… I know what this is.

Somehow, she’d walked in on the induction of this year’s witches and mages into the Enodia Coven.

That somehow was amongst the other cloaked figures. Theo caught sight of her and started waving. She gritted her jaw.

I don’t want to watch some freaky ritual.

Especially with all these sluagh around. The scent of Sulphur was nauseating. She dampened down her shifter senses, trying to shut out the overwhelming stench. Before she could make herself scarce, though, the quiet broke with her name.

Jess. The High Mage of Enodia, Jorah, stood opposite the inductees. His tall six-foot-five frame loomed impressively over the initiates.

High Mage indeed.

Jess forced a smile on her face, even as she wanted nothing more than to run from the intense-eyed mage.

Her smile slipped.

Did you smile at a coven’s dark rites?

Jorah negated the need to find the correct protocol. Theo said you’d be attending. Stand by me. They’re about to swear their oaths.

So much for getting away.

The plinth Jess joined the High Mage on was like a pulpit, a platform raised above the others. It awarded a strange view of the inductees’ upturned faces, shadowed by their hoods.

Jess glared at the sandy-haired mage, almost at the end of the line. Theo’s pale green eyes glittered. She clenched her fists, and her gaze scooted away from him. The bare bodies laid out like slabs of meat checked her.

She knew that Enodians didn’t kill humans. They showed up at death sites to collect the souls. They were a bit like grim reapers. The Enodians had links with nursing homes and hospitals as training sites for the young witches and mages within the coven. They’d probably retrieved the bodies from one. She fought back a shudder as she pictured these paras plundering human facilities, treating these people as nothing more than raw materials, not as people who had once had lives and loved ones.

Seeing the bodies laid out like this was unusual. Jess knew that Enodians had little interest in the physical in their quest for power. Their power lay in the psychological and spiritual realm, in the power tethering the sluagh gave them. These bodies must only be of ceremonial interest.

Yet doubt crept in. Her stomach turned. There was a red stain in the middle of each of the bodies. Were those wounds on their stomachs?

Jorah’s voice resonated through the crypt. Judith.

The witch beside Theo stepped forwards and gazed up at Jorah.

He asked of her, Will you take your seat in the house of our Lord Netherworld and Lady Night?

I will. The witch approached the nearest corpse and took from the red of the corpse’s stomach.

Jess gulped.

Ew. Is she going to eat human flesh?

Judith announced, I descend to the Netherworld to dine with the dead. Tethered to our Lord, I rise anew into the darkness of our Lady Night. She put the blood-red piece into her mouth.

Jess’s heart thundered. Her senses roved through the murk. Since shifting into her wolf form a month ago, she could call on her acute senses whenever she needed them. She pushed past the revolting rotten egg aroma. The sweet tang of berries filled her nostrils, telling her that there was a mound of fruit upon each of the bodies. Her distaste ebbed.

The witch, Judith, returned to her station.

Jorah asked Theo the same question.

Theo swore his allegiance to the Night and Netherworld. When he took a red berry from the corpse, his gaze met Jess’s. His smoky voice wafted through her head. Trust a shifter to take things too literally.

Heat stole across Jess’s cheeks. Her expression must have betrayed her horror.

It’s still symbolic cannibalism, she countered.

They communicated through the network of Theo’s sluagh. Theo had given her a few strands of his hair while they’d been in the Triodia Penitentiary and vice versa. They’d renewed these tokens and could still communicate in this disembodied way. It required eye contact or Jess to touch the lock of his hair she carried. Although, she’d tried lately not to carry the lock of hair much. She couldn’t afford to. She had too many secrets to keep. Even from Teddy. She’d only brought it tonight in case she had trouble finding him.

His chuckle sounded through the smoke in her head. You’re far more of a cannibal than I am, Remi.

Like blood smeared across a wall, the memory of her teeth ripping into Lorenzo’s neck, the Remus Alpha, bloomed. It wasn’t the blood and flesh she’d tasted in wolf form that bothered her. She’d long accepted what she’d done. Killing Lorenzo had been right. Vengeance for Caylee, her foster sister’s murder. Lorenzo deserved the death she’d given him. Not just for Caylee’s murder, but for murdering Jess’s mother, Alessandra Remus. She’d also learned that he’d been the one to abandon her in the woods as a baby after he’d killed her mother.

But it wasn’t Jess’s killing that Theo wanted to rile her about.

Jess’s nostrils flared at Theo’s challenging stare. He knew full well where her thoughts would go by throwing such a statement at her. He wanted her to go there, wanted her to focus on the mystery concerning how she’d managed to kill the Rem Alpha.

Even as a half Rem, she shouldn’t have been able to deny the blood command of her Alpha, Lorenzo Remus. She remembered the commanding tone with which he’d ordered her to stay in her human form. She’d felt the prickle of the command like goosebumps along her skin, but otherwise, the order hadn’t affected her. Her form had blurred into its lupine lines, enabling her to fight and kill him.

Something that had all too quickly been known about here at Castle Nox. Almost as soon as she’d arrived, she’d been an unwitting celebrity. News that she’d managed to slay her Alpha spread through the castle. Her ability to deny her Alpha’s blood call was met with wonder. Everywhere she went, speculative looks followed her as if she were bejeweled.

She’d coped with the unwanted attention as she always did. By running. Most of the last month, she’d spent out in the open, in the woods of Castle Nox, up the Cairngorm Mountains and in its glens. Except this time, she’d been able to build speed and power like never before. Running in wolf form was … ecstasy. Everything fell away, except the woods. She’d got to know miles of woodland. With just the subtle differences between the scents of trees, she could find her way. Rowan, elm, yew, alder, birch, and pine, she could distinguish from the difference in their perfumery. She’d gotten used to her shifter power, too, losing herself in the feel of dirt and roots beneath the pads of her paws and claws. Even now, she smelt the undertone of heather and dew in her hair, an echo of how much the moorland clung to her. The textured scents seemed to expunge the past from her and reminded her that the magic of transformation was only ever a hair’s breadth away.

Yet, the weight of regret rested on her. It was unsafe for her to return to the human world. She’d had to put aside her dream of art school. As she watched these witches and mages become full-fledged Enodians, sourness roiled through her. Portland Art School’s term had already begun, and she wasn’t in attendance. Instead, she remained here in this dark, dank castle.

Jess reminded herself that the Enodian Coven was all that was keeping her safe. Outside of Enodia’s walls and grounds, she was hunted. The Triodia Coven sought to bring her and her friends to justice. They had broken out of the Triodia Pen. Theo had used soul warfare to torture Warden Whitmore and the para guards, and Jess had killed her uncle, the Rem Alpha.

Yeah, we’re definitely wanted.

She watched the tenth witch being sworn into the coven and felt as if this ceremony would never end.

Once you’d watched your cannibal sworn in, you really should be allowed to leave.

She knew she had to watch the ceremony to its completion though. Jorah, the High Mage, had permitted this unusual honor of allowing an outsider to witness their rite. She couldn’t afford to cause offense by scampering off. All too often, in between each part of the ceremony, Jorah’s eyes considered her. She caught his gaze enough to notice the flecks of green in his grey eyes, their hue like lichen on bark.

Jess stifled her irritation at him, but whenever one of the inductees turned their impertinent gaze upon her, she scowled.

I’m sick of being treated like an exhibit.

She’d heard enough whispers to know that the majority of Enodians were speculating on what she was waiting for. By blood and slayer rights, she was entitled to the Rem Alphahood. They wondered why she hadn’t claimed it yet.

As if becoming Rem Alpha is a fitting substitute to going to art school.

Jorah had offered the help of his coven to her too: to fend off any Triodians when she marched upon La Alba to challenge the interim Alpha. She’d heard from him that Dearbhla, Lorenzo’s right-hand, had named herself Alpha.

Jess had managed to drag her feet these past few weeks by claiming that she needed to get to grips with her shifter power before making such a move. In reality, all she was waiting for was Rune. To come back from Umbra. To come back with answers. And, hopefully, with somewhere far more welcome to shelter than with the clan who had killed her sister and mother or with these creepy Enodians.

Hope fluttered through her, but she tamped down her train of thought. She still carried Theo’s lock of hair. All it would take was one careless glance to capture the secret that weighed most heavily upon her.

Finally, the last mage took his oath and ate the fruits of the dead.

Jorah’s measured words rang. The dead nourish us, but we, too, share ourselves with them. Our very soul their shelter. Only the sturdiest is worthy of the sluagh horde.

Heebie-jeebies.

As Jess prayed that it was over, Jorah added, Who among you possesses greatness?

With Jorah’s cryptic question, the fire across the pool dimmed and petered out. The Netherworld portal closed. The vault plunged into darkness.

Jess wasn’t robbed of her sight completely. Thanks to the echo of her shifter senses, she made out the indistinct figures of the inductees. She heard their movements, too—the shuffle of footsteps on stone, their quickening breaths, and heartbeats. It reminded her of the sounds at nightfall outside that she’d grown familiar with in wolf form. The susurrations of rabbits and deer retreating, the stirrings of foxes and wildcats. The cacophony charged with the end of the day and the beginning of night.

A whimper pierced the crypt.

One of the initiates.

Jess’s heightened senses detected the witch’s rigid body, paralyzed by fear. The other witches and mages were in an array of different positions. Some rigid, too, others shuffling around the vaults as if searching for…

Comprehension dawned.

The portal had been open, and the newly deceased souls had somehow been held at the threshold to the Netherworld. But now Jorah had shut the portal. The souls that belonged to the four bodies were trapped here.

The hunt was on. Jess had spent most of her time lately as a nocturnal predator. She knew this dance.

You shut the portal, Jess whispered. The souls that belong to the bodies are being…

Tethered, Jorah finished. The strongest witches and mages will be the ones to tame their fear and win them.

Jess’s heart quickened. She’d seen soul warfare in action when Theo had broken them out of prison. She remembered the way that he had cast the sluagh tethered to his soul outwards. They had slipped into the para guards, dredging up deep-rooted fears and projecting them through their minds. The powerful, hulking shifter guards had been brought low, curling and whimpering on the floor, locked into their nightmares.

Until now, Jess hadn’t realized what tethering sluagh involved. Now, she felt it. In the stock still figures of the inductees throughout the room, sealed within their fear. The scent of sweat filled her nostrils, acrid and cloying. The initiates fought their inner demons as the souls they sought fought back. The Enodians had to fight through their own internal battle to claim the soul.

One inductee begged.

Another moaned.

Jess was reminded of Warden Whitmore in prison, scrabbling in the dirt of the Cathedral floor. She remembered how she’d been consumed by her fear of imprisonment so fully that she’d groped blindly in the dirt, convinced she was caged.

Jess imagined the souls slinking around the crypt like mist. Her pulse quickened. She imagined one mistaking her as a threat. She imagined it crawling into her and conjuring a waking nightmare.

What will come from the deep?

The thought of the thing that had come through the Between in the Triodia Prison, prowled her mind. The scream bubbled in her memory. Dread mounted. Each blurry outline of the inductee sharpened Jess’s attention. She held her breath, searching the darkness for the skeletal, shuffling figure that she feared above all else.

She felt sure that the darkness would produce it, that the sluagh would mistake her for one of their enemies, and bring to life the emaciated, ragged form. Its matted hair hanging over its face, just as its robes hung from its bones.

The Sidhe.

Sweat prickled along her brow.

The seconds passed.

Nothing stepped from the murk.

The minutes drew on, and Jess slowly gathered herself. The hunted souls were wholly occupied in their warfare with the mages and witches, who strained with their whole being to tether them. Her thoughts finally stilled, allowing her to focus on what was happening around her.

The initiates’ souls were under siege from the sluagh. Jess imagined the hunted souls, rooting around in the land of the initiates, and pulling up their fears. As the whimpers and moans continued, the darkness seemed to thicken, as if it were growing heavier. More than ever, she wished to be outside in the cleansing night air. With her shifter senses, she noticed that one mage wasn’t tense at all. Swathed in darkness, he seemed to be drinking in the scene around him as if delighting in it. Foreboding prickled through her, and she knew who the mage was even before she saw him.

A flicker of fire erupted, throwing illumination over Theo’s wide face: the first victor. He looked unnervingly fresh among the other sweaty-faced Enodians. Jess was reminded once more of the ease with which he had battled the guards and warden in the prison.

The witch, Judith, and two other mages, stood panting but exultant, and joined the circle of firelight cast on the pool; they used the sluagh they had just tethered to open the Netherworld portal once more.

The other initiates, mostly dazed, some still trembling, picked themselves up from the ground, and took weary steps towards the glowing portal.

Congratulations, Jorah proclaimed, his focus on the four victors. "Tethering a sluagh at this ceremony speaks of great things to come."

Jess’s notice swiveled from the disappointed faces to the chosen few, basking in the High Mage’s words and their comrades’ jealousy. She wondered how many sluagh Theo had tethered to his soul already. Was it the sheer number he’d tethered that made him so much more powerful than his peers? She wondered how many more he would, in his lifetime, go on to claim.

His gaze found her, Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Remi?

She offered him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She tried to remember when his smoky voice in her head had soothed her. A couple of months ago, in the first few weeks of their friendship, his voice within her head had seemed like incense. Now, as she watched him and his fellow triumphant initiates, it was as though the scent of smoke was too intense. Was it the sluagh that was causing the smoke in her head to seem too strong or had it become sulfurous?

A chill crawled down Jess’s spine as she watched the fervor of victory claim Theo. There was no mistaking the determined glint in his eye. Intuition prickled through her. He’d invited her to the ceremony knowing what the dark would conjure for her, knowing what would be induced by the thought of hostile souls crawling around the vaults. After all, he had been there at the prison when the Sidhe had come forth from the earthen portal and heralded the Rem Alpha’s death.

But, as she once more caught the zealous gleam in his eyes, dread settled on her. He knew what the other Enodians didn’t about how she had resisted the blood command of her Alpha. The Sidhe, the death omen, had appeared to Jess and heralded Lorenzo’s death. For some reason, the Sidhe had a connection with Jess. It was one of the mysteries Rune sought answers to in Umbra.

Is that why Theo invited me here? Did he hope to find out more about the secrets I’m keeping?

She batted away thoughts of Rune and the bigger mystery concerning her that he had promised to solve. It wasn’t a safe topic to think about. Not with Theo’s gaze on her. Unease rippled through her as she imagined his sluagh rooting around in her mind, and she stayed clear of his stare.

It was only with Theo’s help that she’d escaped prison. She’d always be grateful for his friendship. Yet foreboding crept into her bones. He’d kept her connection to the Sidhe secret so far. But as Jorah’s intense scrutiny settled on her again, her pulse quickened.

What if Teddy has already sold my secret?

2

In The Woodwork

Matteo blinked, dazed. The Triodia room was warm. Too warm. Despite standing, his head lolled to his chest. He’d barely slept the last week, using every minute not on duty to research the matter of Jess’s anomalous power in the Triodia Library. Consequently, any stillness generally caused him to doze off.

Matteo flinched. The doors swung open beside him. Fern Trever, Triodia’s High Witch, entered. Matteo felt as if a storm swept through. It wasn’t Fern’s movements, though, but his own troubled internal scape that made it so. Until a month ago, Matteo had only ever seen the High Witch from a distance. Like most people he guessed, he’d only seen her from a crowd. One year when he’d been at Rome’s Silva Academy, she’d presided over graduation and addressed the graduates.

The High Witch was in her fifties. Her black skin and the bright green of her long loose dress made Matteo think of luscious jungles. Her untamed afro made her seem as tall as he was. She had a presence as she strode in, her gait confident and poised.

This was the second time Fern had met with his Alpha, Giovanni, in the last month. The last time was at Villa Silva, the night Jess broke out of the Naples penitentiary. They were meeting here in the Triodia Headquarters today as the Seelie King would be joining them. As it was a public building, an Alpha’s sentinels were permitted to be stationed within the meeting room. It was away from the busy traffic of witches, mages, and shifters that the main Cathedral of Silva drew in. The only reminder that they were, indeed, in the auspicious Cathedral building were the rafters above; shaped to resemble forest boughs. The rest of the walls and floor were shiny mahogany.

Giovanni already sat at the long, polished table in the center of the room. Another witch was opposite with a notebook and pen, here to record proceedings.

Both the notetaker and Giovanni stood when Fern swept in.

The notetaker greeted Fern, Feliz Dia de los Muertos.

Matteo didn’t speak Spanish but recognized the Day of the Dead. It wasn’t an official Triodian celebration, having far too many associations with the values of Enodians. But Matteo had heard that Fern hailed from somewhere on the border of Texas and Mexico, and it was customary for witches to inherit traditions from the cultures they grew up with.

Fern gave her colleague a brusque nod before seating herself at the head of the table.

A month ago, when Fern first saw Giovanni and discussed the escapees from the Naples pen, he’d given Matteo the rundown of what had passed. Fern’s focus was primarily on recapturing Jess; her interest incited by the mystery of how the escapee had resisted her Alpha’s blood command. It was no skin off Fern’s nose that Jess had killed the Rem Alpha, but she was eager to find out how she could have done it.

The mystery that both Matteo and Giovanni guarded fiercely: Jess was both Rem and Rom, and yet … neither. Giovanni had tried to command Jess to stay at the penitentiary. She had shifted back into her human form but had still left. Matteo was sure that Lorenzo must have attempted to use his blood command on Jess, too. But the Rem Alpha’s command hadn’t held, either. Matteo’s head spun as the magnitude of what he was holding back settled upon him, as it did a thousand times a day. His world felt off-kilter. It wasn’t the world he’d grown up in. It wasn’t the one he’d spent four years serving in as a soldier. Ever since the night they’d gone after Jess to La Alba, his world had irrevocably changed.

The scene they’d found there flickered through Matteo’s mind. Lorenzo’s wolf form sprawled on the marble floor, the slick red pool on the white marble as startling as blood-stained snow. It had been difficult to believe that Jess, who hadn’t shifted until that very night, had been capable of such a victory.

It was Dearbhla, Lorenzo’s right-hand, who had reported that Jess had killed the Alpha to the Triodia. Since Lorenzo’s death, Dearbhla Remus had claimed the Alphahood. She had been able to sidestep the allegations of her own involvement in framing Jess for the murder of a human by testifying that she had been bound to do so by the command of her Alpha.

Dearbhla was another thorn in their side. Matteo was uneasy that she’d speak out about Jess’s blood tie to Giovanni. She had been present in the square when the two Alphas had met to talk about Jess. Yet it seemed that Dearbhla was biding her time. She hadn’t said anything. Perhaps she was waiting to use the information for her own means at the opportune moment.

The Triodia had placed watchers at Jess’s old home in Fort Kent, as well as across the other places she’d lived in Maine. The Triodia hoped she’d reappear and get picked up, but they were also combing the other homes and national parks she’d spent time in. The Tassology teams were busy trying to divine some clue as to her whereabouts. Matteo dreaded to think what would happen if they succeeded. With a bit of blood and earth magic, would they divine that she belonged to both clans? If so, how long before Giovanni was condemned a blood traitor and Jess collateral damage?

Giovanni had placed many of his own pack members across Maine. For all intents and purposes, he gave the outward appearance of seeking her for the same reason as the High Witch. Matteo had lived on tenterhooks the past few weeks, at one moment fearing news of Jess, at the next frustrated that there was none.

Unease churned through him as he waited for the meeting to begin. Matteo willed himself to breathe deeply, trying to steady his heart rate. Not only did he dislike the idea of being a distraction to Giovanni, but he didn’t want the other shifter sentinel to detect his nerves. Something she’d be liable to do with her heightened hearing.

Since the event last month, Giovanni had replaced his ordinary sentinels. He’d reassigned Matteo as one, and replaced his other one with Piera, his daughter. She now stood guard on the other side of the door. Matteo knew Giovanni and Piera were close. Yet Giovanni hadn’t entrusted her with his treacherous secret that he had another daughter, who was half Rem.

No, only I’m privy to that.

Appointing Piera as his other sentinel seemed to suit Giovanni. He could send her away whenever he wanted, in a way that would have been harder to explain to just any other pack member. Yet it was causing friction, not just between father and daughter, but between Matteo and her. Unfortunately, that was something Matteo had no room to worry about.

Fern got straight to the point. "There’s been no trace