Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 22

  “That would be him, or her I guess,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “She came to me one time in her original, crone-like form and showed me the book that she was working on. That book,” he nodded his head, “the one you mentioned, The Book of Demon Lore. She wrote it because she was starting to feel guilt over her actions. She was created from nothing but the bones of animals and dead limbs for only one purpose, that of performing dark magic, writing spells, but over time, even she had begun to evolve. She was becoming more human every day. Soon she started to show signs of regret and feel bad about all the things that she had done through her very long, one track life. She started to hope for forgiveness for all of those things. She wrote the book so others would be able to understand all of this and hopefully make things right. By doing so, Zeke, the crone, gave away all of the rules of The Primordial. It upset The Master so much that he sent his soldiers out to find her. They succeeded and thought that they had destroyed her, but it is believed among some Durori that she still exists in some form, somewhere. The book got away from them and ended up in the hands of a woman near the sea where it was buried under the water and hasn’t been seen since.”

  Meghan didn’t tell him that she and Embry had found the book and that the last time that she had seen it that it had been in the possession of the soldiers. “So if all of this was started as Stanwood’s response to a curse that the Halford family put on his bloodline, how do we break the curse? How will it end?” Meghan asked.

  “Stanwood created Fractus as a way to fight back at the Halfords, to cause them heartbreak until they break the curse. It is believed that the Halfords will not lift the curse until Fractus is destroyed. But the problem is that when Stanwood created Fractus, he locked it behind a door. His statement there was that Fractus would not be destroyed until the curse was lifted. It may be hard to comprehend this idea, but the entirety of Fractus, the world that we are in right now, all of it, us included, is in a small wooden box that is locked in the cellar of Stanwood Rimbault’s house. He carved a symbol on the door and made it so that the door can’t be opened except by a Rimbault that has fallen in love, hence the problem. Each one of the families refuses to give up in their own intentions. The Halfords say that they will not lift the curse until Fractus is destroyed and they are able to live happily ever after, but the door can’t be opened until a Rimbault falls in love. Without opening the door, no one can get to the box. It is a double edged sword. You would think that somebody from one of the families eventually has to give up, but this has already gone on for two centuries and shows no signs of stopping.”

  “So what is that horrible rumble that we’ve been hearing?”

  “There is a prophecy in The Book of Demon Lore that says that there will be a day where a destroyer comes and eats all of Fractus. It is why the crone wrote the spell for Ella Rimbault. She wrote it so that Ella would be able to set things right and destroy what she and her husband had created. Ella was killed, and the creature was never conjured and sent here. Until now that is. It is believed that this creature will not stop until it has destroyed every part of it. I think that is what we are hearing. It is the end approaching.”

  “So if it is sent to destroy every part of Fractus, what happens to those of us like me and her?” Meghan tilted her head toward Valerie. “The ones that were marked?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I think you’ll be spared. I think only the mark that had been placed on you will be removed. And really, when you think about it, it is the only thing that intertwines you with Fractus.”

  “Valerie said that Darren has started to remember his past and obviously you have. Do you think it is somehow connected to that?”

  “I think that is why everyone is starting to remember their past. Things are unraveling. Lines are already being drawn. There are those of the Durori that are siding with the good and a smaller number that are going along with the darkness, the side of The Master. Because of the creature being summoned on Earth and sent here, there is a hole in the atmosphere. The world of Earth is bleeding over into ours. I’ve always thought that the past holds an important role in the present, that its effects are always closer than we think. Whether it is learning from our mistakes or continuing down the same path that we always have, our past shapes our future. It is fitting that all of this is taking place on Samhain. Since ancient times, it has been a day to remember those loved ones that have passed on and which the veil to the spirit world is at its lowest. It is the one night of the year that -”

  “The past is the closest it’ll ever be,” Valerie said, nearly repeating verbatim what Meghan had already mentioned on the porch as they had stood there, contemplating the jack-o-lanterns. The two women looked at each other and smiled.

  “You know your festivities and customs,” Thomas said.

  “She taught me a little bit,” Valerie answered and nodded toward Meghan.

  “So is this prophecy connected to the one about a Rimbault falling in love and thus being able to open the cellar door, gaining access to the Fractus box and destroying it once and for all?” Meghan asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “Its not, but I believe that the two are connected in some fashion. I think that everything that happens in our life leads in some way or another to an eventual outcome. As much as I hate to say this, there is a problem with the curse. With the crone missing and maybe even dead, the Halfords have no access to acquiring a spell to break the curse even if they wanted or needed to. The spell to end it can only be written by the one that wrote the one that started it. But several years ago, I had an idea. I thought that since The Master had created beings in the likeness of demons, why couldn’t I do something similar, but opposite? And with this thought in mind, I used symbols of good to create something of my own. Not only is the hummingbird a symbol of love, it is also believed among many cultures of the world that the birds are able to travel through space and time. I used our rough sketch of the Durori and created a creature with the essence of the hummingbird. I wanted to make it so that he is able to travel into the past. I was hoping that he would be able to find the crone and set things right once and for all. No one knows of this, what I’ve done, except me, Rebecca, and now the two of you.”

  There was an enormous rumble, breaking the conversation. The entire house shook. The tea cups that sat on the table in front of each of them rattled on top of their saucers. The crystals of the chandelier that hung from the ceiling clattered together in a dinging chime. The lights flickered out and came back on. The books on the shelves wobbled and one fell to the floor. After the quake settled, everything got quiet. Meghan’s heart was racing. It had been the biggest rumble that she had heard or felt yet. The newly planted idea of a creature bringing The End along with it was nerve racking. She couldn’t help but wonder who had discovered the talisman and the spell. Everyone in the room was silent, looking around and waiting for an aftershock, but the rumble that came next was more severe than the one before.

  Everything shook. The room trembled. Books fell. Ceramic animals crashed to the floor, shattering on impact. To Meghan’s right, Valerie instinctively put her hands over her head. Across from her, Rebecca stepped closer to Thomas and he stood up, wrapping his wife in his arms. The rumbled continued, only growing in momentum. The chandelier crashed to the table. Crystal scattered outward. The entire bookshelf fell to the side, nearly crashing onto Thomas. The china cabinet’s doors were swinging to and fro. Plaster from the ceiling was raining down on them. It was all happening so fast that it was a blur. When the door frames began to fall loose and crash to the floor, Meghan jumped to her feet. The chair that she had been sitting in clattered to the hardwood.

  Embry! She had to get to Embry. That was the only thing in her mind. As she turned, out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the wall as it was cracking. The split went up first and then spider webbed outward from the epicenter. By the time that she grabbed onto Valerie’s arm, she was sure that the house was falling down. They turned to run a
nd emerged through the front door just as the porch cover was splitting from its support on the side of the house. The roof of the porch fell just after Valerie’s foot left the bottom step. Meghan spun around, realizing that neither Thomas nor Rebecca were there with them. As they backed up toward he woods, away from the house, in front of them the house continued to fall apart piece by piece. The brick chimney came crashing down. The sound of it hitting the tin roof and then the ground was thunderous. The lopsided shutters came loose, swiveled where they hung, and eventually fell off the wall. The glass of the windows shattered. The porch railing fell from its stronghold. The entire house was shaking in a crazy cacophony.

  “Thomas!” Meghan yelled. “Rebecca!”

  “We have to go help them!” Valerie yelled to her friend and was already running toward the unsafe predicament that was just several feet ahead of her.

  The house fell in on its self. The collapse was so massive that debris scattered all the way out to where Meghan stood. Dust pummeled into the blue sky. It was hard to decipher what were clouds and what was dust. By the time that the destruction died down enough to where she could see what lay in front of her, the home was flattened.

  “No,” Meghan said as if that one word would make it untrue. She felt her eyes fill with tears. She had only just met the two of them, but she knew that they were good people and they hadn’t deserved to be stuck in Fractus the way that they had been for the past two centuries. In front of her, Valerie was turning around and walking back in her direction.

  It didn’t stop. The ground opened up underneath the rubble, and what used to be Thomas Riley’s home fell into the abyss. It was as if the entire thing was swallowed up by the darkness. The sound was horrendous. It was an entire life falling into nothing. Valerie stopped in her tracks and spun around to find the source of the new sound that had come from behind her. From within that deep chasm, there was a blindingly white light that was brighter than the daytime sky. All at once, the light shot upward in a straight column that had to have been ten feet tall. It spun tornado-like, and just a moment later, spread outward into a shape that was immediately recognizable. It was a human-like figure with a wide expanse of wings that was covered in feathers. The light emanating from the figure was so bright that Meghan had to hold her forearm over her eyes to block some of the glare. The nondescript face of the figure looked at Meghan and smiled. It was Thomas. Even though it didn’t really resemble him, she knew. Next to him, another white light just like the one before it erupted upward into a similar shape. Rebecca. And just like before, just within the blink of an eye, her wings shot out from each side of her body. Meghan knew without a doubt that what she was seeing in front of her were angels. The two of them began to flap their wings and flew upward, over the orange and golden landscape, disappearing into the clouds of the bright, autumn sky.

  Meghan and Valerie stood where they were, silently watching the beautiful scene as it unfolded in front of them. Meghan remembered the dreams that she had been having and it was all clear to her now. She now knew why she had felt so safe being wrapped within the wings of the soldier. It was because it hadn’t been one of the vulture-like soldiers at all. It had been Embry, just like the embrace had made her feel that it had been. She could finally remember the dream in more detail. She could remember now that the wings hadn’t been black like those that she had seen on the soldiers when they had attacked her car and when she had come face to face with them in Emecheta. The wings in her dream had been white, just like the ones that she had seen in front of her just a second earlier.

  There was a rumble again, past the house, deep within the woods on the other side of the destruction, breaking the tranquility. When Meghan looked, she saw that the trees that were way off in the distance were falling over. It was like an invisible, giant combine was making its way through the woods. Everything was coming apart right in front of them. Meghan knew that the creature that Thomas had told them about was already there. Someone had found the talisman and released it upon Fractus. It really was The End and all Meghan could think about was Embry. Slowly but surely, the hole that the house had fallen into was getting bigger. One of the camellia trees collapsed over and fell into the oblivion. As the number of falling trees increased, Meghan could see even clearer that the same hole of dark nothingness was spreading. All of Fractus was falling away.

  “C’mon Valerie, we have to go!” Meghan shouted toward the other woman, and the two of them turned from the chaos that was unfolding in front of them and ran into the woods.

  PART FOUR

  Showtime

  CHAPTER TEN

  INSIDE THE woods was a hectic blur of frantic confusion. Not only were both Meghan’s and Valerie’s nerves on end, but everything around them was trembling. The lanterns that hung from the low tree branches were rocking back and forth on their handles. Leaves were falling down from the tree branches onto them. They ran along the leaf covered path, toward their own house with the determination of finding Embry and Darren. As they ran within the woods of pine and oak that stretched out on each side of them, they could catch the occasional glimpse of a wandering fox that seemed to be lost in the confusion of everything coming apart.

  They emerged from the cover of the trees, and for the first time of following the path through the woods, were not where they wanted to be. Meghan understood at that moment that the upset of the world was causing the magic of the path to falter, that it wasn’t working like it had been made to do.

  The area of Fractus that they came upon was where The Master’s palace was located. The tall structure of quartzite loomed over the land, leaning toward the right. It looked like it could topple over with the slightest breeze, and Meghan wondered how it had managed to survive so far into that day when Thomas’s house had collapse so easily.

  A strong line of soldiers stood around the base of the palace. Meghan realized that they were guarding the entrance to the onslaught of Durori that were flying in from the sky.

  The Durori pummeled into the soldiers, knocking some of them back, and they tumbled together across the ground in a mass of swinging punches and swiping claws. Meghan watched as one of the Durori that was kneeled over a downed soldier raised both of his hands high above his head and swung them down onto the soldier. When the Durori brought his hands back up, the soldier’s decapitated head was held tight within his grasp. Underneath the Durori, the soldier erupted into flame. The Durori jumped back from the burning fire.

  Meghan knew that what she was seeing was those battle lines that Thomas had mentioned. He had said the lines had already been drawn and there were those that had decided to fight for the good and fewer that had joined The Master’s side. Some of them must’ve been good men before being brought to Fractus while others had had ill intent even on Earth. Now that they were remembering who they were before, their true selves were emerging.

  In front of her, the soldiers were taking a beating by the Durori. Everywhere that she looked there was blood and eruptions of flame. Thomas had said that the soldiers, similar to the Durori, had been created out of magic. She assumed that they had not once been human like the Durori. Instead, they had been created in a similar way that the crone had been made out of bone, branch and ash. They had been created for one purpose, to hunt, and so the fire must be their finality.

  Aside from the muscular Durori that were busy fighting at the soldiers, there were countless cherubs with arrows held high, jabbing at the vulture-like soldiers wherever they could. In front of her, there was a twirling dance of a soldier fighting at a cherub that was perched on its shoulders with his legs wrapped tight around the soldier’s neck. The cherub jabbed the pointed arrow into the soldier’s eye. Blood shot out, and the soldier burst into flame underneath the cherub. The cherub screeched, and his wings flung into a fast rhythm as he zipped away from the fiery danger. Based on what she was seeing, the soldiers were so far coming up defeated by both the Durori and the cherubs. One of the cherubs flew toward her and held out a sli
m shoulder bag that had several arrows slid inside. “In case you need them,” the cherub said.

  Meghan took the bag from the cherub and flung the strap over her own shoulder. She knew that they were the arrows that were used in marking someone as a Durori’s True Love. The cherub zipped away.

  Even though there was a battle going among all of them, Meghan could see the other danger, the one that would end it all, as it was quickly approaching. From where she stood, she could see that the waves of the ocean were the largest that she had ever seen. The tide was higher than she even thought possible. It seemed hurricane-like as the waves crashed over the side of the stone and washed across the lawn of the palace. She knew that the shaking that had been brought on because of the rumble had caused the ocean to become upset. But what happened next was so breathtaking and scary that it took a moment for her to register exactly what it was that she was seeing.

  In the sea, far off in the distance, there was blackness. At first it looked like something in the water, but no, it was the water disappearing, pouring into that black, bottomless pit. Meghan knew that it was the same fissure that she had witnessed Thomas Riley’s house fall into and that it had already made its way there, all the way to The Master’s palace.

  Valerie turned to look at her. Her mouth was hanging open at the impossibility of it all. As they watched, the entire sea emptied out into the dark fathom. It was like the plug had been pulled at the bottom of a bathtub full of water and it all disappeared, twirling down the drain. Where just a moment earlier there had been waves crashing over the side of the rocky dunes, the water that was there was being pulled in the opposite direction, away from the land.