Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch Read online

  BOUND IN BLUE

  Book One of the Sword of Elements

  Heather Hamilton-Senter

  Two Paths Publishing

  Gods walk among us.

  All you have to do is See.

  When Rhiannon discovers that beings out of myth and legend are real, her ability to see magic as color puts her at the center of a conflict with the ancient gods of Avalon. Her fate depends on mastering her power and using it to remake the Sword of Elements—once known as Excalibur—but if she succeeds, she could become far more dangerous than any god.

  And gods don't like being challenged.

  Copyright © 2014 by Heather Senter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Two Paths Publishing

  www.twopathspublishing.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes and have been fictionalized. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, or institutions, is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design © 2014 BookCoverArtistry.com

  Bound In Blue/ Heather Hamilton-Senter. -- 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-0-9938225-1-3

  To my family, eternally.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A mermaid found a swimming lad,

  Picked him for her own,

  Pressed her body to his body,

  Laughed; and plunging down

  Forgot in cruel happiness

  That even lovers drown.

  ―William Butler Yeats

  Fear is white and thickly veined with sea-blue.

  I reached over the bed rail and touched Mom’s cheek. The industrial clock on the wall ticked once, loudly. Jerking my hand back, I rubbed the tips of my fingers against my jeans.

  She was cold.

  I reminded myself that her skin was always cool. Except for her black hair, everything about Mom was cool and pale, even her eyes.

  They were cloudy now and staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t make myself close them the way people always do in movies. I couldn’t touch her again.

  Gripping the sides of the chair as the color of fear washed over me again, I felt ashamed. The only thing Mom was ever afraid of was a man with silver hair. I saw him once when I was little, across a busy street. We were driving, but Mom stopped the car and pulled me down to the floor. As she held me close, the sound of her heart was a wave crashing against rocks.

  Rhiannon, listen to me. We cannot be seen. Hide in the shadows and be still and silent.

  As I listened to her, I imagined a blue shadow covering me, protecting me from whatever it was that she was afraid of. My own fear broke apart like ice on a churning ocean and the colors of all my emotions erupted out of me for the first time, dashing themselves against the blue like they were trying to break free. I wrapped the shadow closer and my colors calmed and dissipated. I wasn’t sure how much of that was a real memory, but the man didn’t see us.

  I’d been seeing colors ever since.

  I once tried to tell Mom about the colors I felt, but she just smiled and looked away. I didn’t try again. It would have been nice to talk with someone about it. I’m sure my colors would be a nice break for some psychiatrist bored with the usual budding Unabombers.

  But fear is white and cold and veined in a wet and moldy blue that echoes the color of the hospital walls.

  A sudden vibration made me jump and startled pink sparkled across my vision. Fumbling in my pocket, I nearly dropped my phone as I pulled it out. My fingers were as numb as if I’d pressed them against ice.

  “How is she?”

  It was Peter. I stared at the screen a moment before shoving the phone away. I couldn’t answer him. If I did, it would make the nightmare true.

  The chair made a vicious scraping noise against the floor as I stood and I froze, heart pounding, imagining the corpse popping up like they do in bad horror movies. Of course, it didn’t move.

  Mom didn’t move.

  I backed away to the door to look for someone to come and tell me what I was supposed to do. The nurse on duty had left to give me time to say goodbye, but there wasn’t anything here to say goodbye to.

  A woman walked past me into the room and strode up to the bed. She wasn’t young, maybe mid-thirties, but she was the most stunning person I’d ever seen. With a mass of dreadlocked, white-blonde hair, and wearing a skirt that looked like a cascade of expensive rags, she was Goth Barbie’s slutty older sister. Touching a black-lacquered finger to Mom’s forehead, the woman whispered, “Viviane, you stupid fool.”

  “Hey!”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say after that. Don’t call my dead Mommy stupid?

  A strange impulse to laugh bubbled up inside me, but I shoved it back down and only a strangled squeak escaped.

  Good thing. Laughing over the body of my dead mother might buy me a one way ticket to a psych eval.

  The woman turned at the sound and seemed surprised to see me standing there. “You must be Rhiannon. We have never met, but my name is Morgan.” I stared at her and she gestured to the bed. “Viviane was my sister.”

  I shook my head. “Mom didn’t have a sister.” The woman didn’t respond and a flash of violet impatience made me blink. “If you’re her sister, how come you didn’t come when she got sick? Why didn’t Mom even tell me about you?” Crackles of red across the violet surprised me—surprised me at how angry I was that I’d been forced to endure all this alone. A long-lost aunt would be a relief, but how could it be possible?

  I glanced out the door to see if I could catch one of the nurses’ attention, but they seemed to be busy with some emergency down the hall.

  The woman was still staring at me. Despite the eccentric clothing, she held herself straight and rigid with her chin lifted slightly and her arms held a little away from her sides like a ballerina.

  Just like Mom.

  “Why didn’t you come?” I whispered, hating the weakness in my voice.

  The woman sighed and looked down at the bed. With a graceful motion, she brushed her fingers across Mom’s arm. “Viviane made her own choices—choices I knew would be her undoing. I saw no reason to force my witness upon them. Still, for the sake of the common cause that once bound us, and for the love I bear her still, I would have come if she had asked it of me. She never did. Any emotion felt for my sister was always a one-sided thing, and she was ever of her own mind.”

  Morgan talked funny—strangely formal like Mom did—but this refugee from a heavy metal music video couldn’t be my aunt.

  Because that would mean Mom lied to me.

  Anger was coming in red streaks now and I walked over to the bedside table and reached for the emergency call button. In one swift movement, the woman was in front of me, grasping my hands hard enough for me to know that she could stop me if she wanted to.

  “Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.”

  I pulled back and after a brief resistance, she let go. “I don’t know you,” I muttered.

  Morgan raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Viviane and I have walked different paths for so long that we could no longer meet in the space between them, but I felt her passing. I would have taken her to rest where she belonged, in t
he free air under the moon. She shouldn’t have been here, hidden away from the sky.”

  There was an accusation in her voice and my cheeks went hot. As we stared at each other, I saw that her eyes were pale—so pale you might think you were looking at a blind woman. I’d never seen anyone with eyes like that before.

  Except Mom.

  I slumped down into the chair by the bed. I’d been up all night waiting for the end. I didn’t have enough energy left to be suspicious.

  After a few uneasy seconds of silence, the woman spoke and her voice was gentler. “What did they say was the cause?”

  I shrugged. “Lupus. Maybe. The doctors weren’t sure. Some auto-immune thing that made her organs shut down one by one. They didn’t know how to stop it.”

  “The doctors of this world are fools.”

  I didn’t disagree. I rubbed my eyes, but they were dry and gritty, as if all the tears in them had turned to sand.

  Morgan stiffened and made a hissing sound between her teeth. “Be still. Others are coming.” And then she walked up to me and poked me hard between the eyes.

  “Hey!” I yelped. “What the hell?”

  Morgan leaned in close. “Stay still. Be quiet. Do not move.” Familiar commands I couldn’t help but obey. Her fingernails dug into my shoulder as she pushed me down into the chair as if somehow she could make me sit more deeply and decidedly than I was already sitting.

  Auntie Morgan is crazy.

  And then the stream of truly crazy filed into the room.

  A young woman sporting a red mohawk who shopped at the same stores Morgan did, but in the blisteringly neon department.

  An older woman with a long braid of white hair wrapped around her waist like a belt.

  A huge, dark-skinned man with a lip ring connected to a gold chain threaded through a piercing in his ear.

  There were more, all as strange as the first three. A curious nurse peered into the room with wide eyes, but a glare from Morgan sent her away.

  I was abandoned to the freak show.

  Some of them touched Mom’s forehead with gentle fingers. A few whispered soft words to Morgan. I just sat there as they ignored me—as good as invisible—while the numbness spread from my fingers up into my body and the white of my fear went black and dirty on the edges like snow on the side of the street.

  “Hello, Morgana,” an amused voice drawled. A good-looking guy leaned in the doorway and smiled at Morgan. Longish hair with a hint of ginger poked out from under a red baseball cap and he had the kind of five o’clock shadow that’s grown on purpose.

  She didn’t smile back. “I prefer to be called Morgan now, as you well know, Thomas Redcap.” She made his name an insult.

  The man’s smile widened. “Ah yes, you’re all modern and casual now. I’d heard. Love the outfit by the way. Did you join a band?” He sounded Irish or something. Miming a tip of his cap, he sauntered into the room and leaned forward as if to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  He gave her a mocking bow. “Well you can’t blame a lad for trying, Morgana the Fair and Perilous.” As he approached the bed and didn’t even glance in my direction, orange irritation crackled along the edges of my vision. It faded to grey shame when he closed Mom’s eyelids with gentle fingers.

  “Poor Viviane,” he murmured. When he looked back at Morgan, his face was serious. “Do I have your leave to continue?”

  She grimaced. “Get on with it.”

  Redcap nodded and then quickly—so quickly I almost couldn’t understand what I was seeing—his hand shot out and a sharp fingernail dragged down Mom’s arm, peeling flesh from it in one long curl like the skin off an apple.

  Horror cut through me like bright lightning and bile burned my throat. I tried to stand, but my legs were dead and the chair only moved a little across the floor. The man’s head shot up and I stared straight into amber eyes edged in red. Caught in those impossible eyes, I couldn’t breathe, until he frowned and his gaze wandered away as if he couldn’t see me at all. With a small shrug, he relaxed.

  And then Redcap put the long strip of my mother’s skin into his mouth and ate it.

  I tried to scream, but my voice had been ripped from my throat and the place on my forehead burned where Morgan had touched me. Wild, panicked colors surged through me as I imagined the skin on my face blackening and peeling away. I couldn’t move. I was frozen and incinerated all at once.

  Stay still. Be quiet. Do not move.

  I was obeying every command. As I stopped struggling against my invisible bonds, the pain faded.

  Morgan shuddered delicately as she flipped the blanket on the bed to cover my mother’s arm. “I know your duty, Redcap, but I do not have to enjoy watching you perform it.”

  A faint flush appeared on the man’s cheeks, but his face was sad. “Poor Viviane,” he repeated. “Her essence is in me now, but there are too many things missing, things which should have been preserved.”

  Morgan looked at Mom with a strange expression on her face. “Viviane keeps her secrets then, even in death.”

  Redcap snorted. “Secrets Cernunnos would pay dearly to know.”

  She glided over to the man and though they were the same height, Morgan seemed to tower over him. “Will you search them out, Thomas Redcap?” she whispered, her mouth close to his, seductive and dangerous. “Will you sell what you find to the highest bidder?”

  The man didn’t move, but his back was to me and I could see his muscles straining the fabric of his shirt across his shoulders—he was holding himself very, very still. “No, Morgana the Fair and Perilous, not even to you.”

  She backed away, her eyes fixed on him like twin moons. “Then let us take our separate paths and be gone from this place.”

  “Hey Rhi . . .” Peter poked his head into the room and I stood so fast that the chair skittered away and hit the wall. Whatever it was that had held me captive was gone.

  I began to babble as I rushed over to my best friend. “Call the police! You need to call the police! That man, what he did, I can’t believe what he did . . .”

  But I couldn’t find the words for what Thomas Redcap had done.

  “Slow down. What are you talking about? What man?”

  “Him!” I whirled and pointed. The room was empty except for the silent body of my dead mother.

  And then all color in the world was gone and there was only black.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The light of the sun stabbed me through my closed eyelids and I knew I couldn’t hide in bed any longer. Bunching my thin quilt into a ball, I threw it across the room in the general vicinity of the laundry basket. It might have made it in too if the basket weren’t already overflowing with dirty clothes.

  Pushing myself up, I rubbed my aching temples. Two months had passed since the day Mom died—since the day I fainted and hit my head—and the headaches from the concussion were a daily event. I winced as my feet touched the floor; all my nerves felt exposed. Purple irritation rushed across my sight and then, without warning, I was blinded by a spinning kaleidoscope of color. All the strength left my limbs and I fell off the bed onto the floor.

  Normally my colors only appeared when my feelings were intense. I suspected I didn’t have much of an imagination either because they were predictable—pale blue for sadness, hot red for anger, and all the colors in between for the various shadings between those emotions. White was fear and black was despair, but usually everything was mixed up and confused without one color predominating. Over the years I’d become used to them slithering through my brain and streaking across my vision.

  I wasn’t so used to them hitting me in my gut.

  When my colors faded and I could see again, I used the bed to stand up, but sharp pain pulsed through my head at the movement. As vomit rose into my throat, I breathed slowly through my nose until my stomach settled.

  After tottering into the shower and scalding my body back into submission, I felt better. Good thing because I h
ad a hell of a day waiting for me. Mom could be pretty vague most of the time, but on some things she was crystal, even when she went all Wicca on me. As she got sicker, she made me promise to scatter her ashes at the lake by sunset of the third day after the next blue moon. She was that specific. This was the third day. It was also the first day of my last year of school, so, double whammy.

  Picking through every piece of clothing I owned, even the dirty ones, I decided on white jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a navy cardigan. I hoped I looked nautical in a cute way, not a Popeye kind of way.

  As if anyone would ever notice.

  I was dragging a brush through my hair when there was one knock at the door, a slam, and then the sound of my battered couch groaning under the weight of a six-foot teenage boy.

  “Oh, by all means, let yourself in,” I called as I gave up trying to force my hair into a sleek ponytail.

  “Blah, blah . . . what was that? Couldn’t hear you!” Peter already had the TV on and was channel surfing when I came out of the bedroom, something he would have never dared to do while Mom was alive.

  “What could possibly be worth watching before eight in the morning?”

  Peter grinned. “There’s always sports on somewhere. Besides, I’ve been up for ages. I’m already bored out of my mind waiting for you to get ready.”

  “You’ve only been here three minutes, jerk.” I tossed a pillow at his face, but he caught it and put it behind his head.

  “Yeah, but when you have a high metabolism like mine, three minutes is actually like three hours.”

  “What stupid comic book did you learn that one from?”

  “Hey, graphic novels are an art form.”

  “Sure they are. And the superbabes in skintight onesies have nothing whatsoever to do with your art appreciation.” I put my hand up just in time to block the pillow that sailed back at me.

  Laughing, I crossed to the tiny kitchen facing the living room and opened the door of my ancient, avocado green fridge. The bare bulb flickering at the back couldn’t hide the fact that my only options were a can of diet soda, a carton of milk way past its expiration date, and a shriveled apple. Or maybe it was a plum.