Spirit Read online

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, pain stinging behind his eyes, his heart. Guilt clung to his throat and made it hard to speak.

  “You must make amends,” Lucrezia continued, still unmoving, her eyelids fluttering. Her eyelashes cast dark shadows on her skin.

  “How? Tell me how, and I will!”

  “Look on the ground beside you, brother.”

  Alvise obeyed. His quiver was there, brimming with arrows. Sunbeams seeped from the window and shone on the metal arrowheads, making them glimmer. He lifted the quiver and secured it to his back, but he couldn’t see his bow. “I’ll slay whatever you want me to slay. Just tell me . . .”

  “Yourself,” she said, her tone cruel, cold.

  Alvise felt a terrible chill invade him. “What?”

  “It won’t take long. And it’ll be less painful than what I’ve had to go through every day and every night since I was thirteen.”

  “I . . .”

  “Do it!” she screamed, her voice suddenly loud and high-pitched. Her hands were little fists, her eyes blazing with an emotion he never thought her capable of feeling for him: hatred. “Do it!” she screamed again. “You let them kill me and take away my childhood. You let them trap me in these nightmares, allowed to do nothing but dream and open portals into the unknown for you! My own brother, who doesn’t have any powers! Rather than hunt and kill the demons myself, I had to watch in silence as you did it, a job I should have been doing, but one I couldn’t because of you! Now it’s your turn to die!”

  “I didn’t know what they would do! We didn’t know . . .”

  “You know now. You know now what happened to me. It’s time to pay your debt,” she hissed.

  It made sense. Her horrible, horrible words actually made sense.

  Trembling, Alvise slipped an arrow out of the quiver and felt the smooth wood he’d watched his father whittle and its steel tip, unflinching under his touch. To pierce his skin with such a thing, to let it bleed his life out of him . . . He couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to.

  “I can’t,” he said, almost pleadingly.

  Lucrezia shrieked again. “It’s your fault! It’s your fault I’m like this! Kill yourself! There is no other way to make amends!”

  “Please, Lucrezia, don’t make me do it,” he begged. And still, his hand curled around the arrow.

  All of a sudden, Lucrezia hissed, her eyes locking on his. They were white inside.

  “You must die,” she said, as if it was an unquestionable truth, a fact that nobody could deny.

  Alvise gazed into her white eyes, and all hope, all joy he had ever felt in his life, drained out of him. Of course he had to die. She was right. He deserved to. He hadn’t saved their mother. Instead he’d lost his powers, let the Sabha break his sister, and now he had watched Niall die. All that had gone wrong in his life was his fault: suddenly it was clear. It was foolish to resist.

  He opened his shirt and positioned the arrowhead against his heart, his hands trembling so much that the arrow nearly fell. He wouldn’t push it in. He was worried his resolve would waver, and his strength would fail as the steel pierced his flesh. He had to let himself sink on it, let gravity do its duty. The arrowhead felt cold on his skin. He held it with both hands, bracing himself for the fall . . .

  “Alvise.” Another voice resounded in the room. The first voice he’d ever heard in his life, the sweetest. His mother’s.

  He looked up slowly. Ludovica Vendramin was standing beside Lucrezia’s bed, dressed in combat gear similar to what he was wearing: a long tunic tied to the waist, laced boots on her feet, her bow and arrows strapped to her back. Her white-blonde hair was loose about her shoulders, and her pale-blue eyes shone in the light of the sun.

  “Alvise. Listen to me. This is not Lucrezia. It’s a Guardian, the sentinel of the stones. It’s deceiving you. What happened to me, what happened to your sister . . . it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was! She wouldn’t have done it had it not been for me having lost my powers!” Alvise sobbed. “You’d still be here . . . and Lucrezia would be the way she used to be . . . our family would be together . . . but I failed you all!”

  “Yes, you failed us all!” Lucrezia screeched from her perch, her voice hungry, deeper, like it didn’t entirely belong to her, as if another being was coming to the surface within her. “You must kill yourself! Do it!”

  “No. That’s not true,” his mother said. “You did well by your family, Alvise.” Her blue-green eyes stared into his soul. “Always. Put down that arrow.”

  Alvise took in his mother’s beloved face, her kind eyes, the power in those hands that could kill Surari, but could also heal. “I lost my powers. Lucrezia and Father are all the family I have left. She was our last chance for dreaming. That’s why she accepted undertaking the ceremony. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  “You don’t know that. Lucrezia made her own decision. And you didn’t lose your powers,” she said, and at that moment, Lucrezia started screaming again, convulsing on the bed.

  “I . . .”

  “You didn’t lose your powers,” his mother repeated above Lucrezia’s screams. “They are still in you, my son. You just have to call them back to you.”

  Alvise took a breath. His powers were still with him? They weren’t gone?

  “I can’t . . . I can’t call them back,” he whispered. His voice was lost under Lucrezia’s screams, but somehow his mother heard him.

  “You can, Alvise. My son, you can, I promise you. Put down that arrow. You must live, not die. You must live and call your powers back. There are lives that depend on you.”

  His sister kept howling – but as he glimpsed her, he saw that she wasn’t herself any more; she’d lost her shape. And was slowly dissolving into fog.

  Alvise let the arrow fall on the mosaic floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but once again, everything went black in a heartbeat. Palazzo Vendramin was gone, and so was Lucrezia’s foggy shape. And his mother – his mother was gone too. The loss of her twisted his insides . . . He wanted to stay wherever he was and see her again, speak to her once more.

  But suddenly, he was conscious again. His eyes opened on the Shadow World around him. The purple sky, the swaying grass. There was an arrow in his hand and a sharp, nipping pain in the skin over his heart. He touched it, and he saw his fingers were red. But it was just a graze; he was alive, he wasn’t even injured badly.

  His mother’s words came back to him: You must live and call your powers back.

  His gaze fell on Niall’s unconscious face, poison raging through his body, his chest rising and falling too slowly to sustain life. You didn’t lose your powers. They are still in you, my son.

  Micol braided her fingers over her head – the smoke was coming. She desperately tried to hide her face in Niall’s chest, to hold her breath, but she was panting so hard she couldn’t stop breathing, not even for a second. As the smoke reached her, she became unconscious at once, her head resting on Niall, her arms around his waist, folded in two like a rag doll.

  She awoke with the sun in her eyes, and the scent of lemons and Mediterranean pines all around her. She recognised the place at once – how could she not? As a child, she’d spent more time there than anywhere else. She was in her family’s lemon grove, at the edge of the pinewoods, back home. She could see her tanned arms and legs in her short cotton dress. Beside her was a basket full of bread and fruit. She and her brothers spent whole days outside, so Elsa, the housekeeper, always gave them a hamper of food to take with them.

  But Elsa was dead, and so were her parents.

  Micol took a short, sharp breath. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t really be here. She was in the Shadow World, and she was dying, poisoned by that weird smoke. Nothing else was real, nothing else was true.

  And then she heard her father’s voice. “Micol! Aiuto! Micol!”

  She jumped. Her father was calling for help. How could that be? He was dead. He’d been mauled by a demon-dog only a
few months before, when Ranieri had started showing signs of the Azasti. They were both dead. And Tancredi too. All of them, the family, the Gamekeepers, every single soul who lived in the house with them was gone. Except her, Micol, left to keep living, alone and bereft.

  And still her father’s voice calling felt so real. “Micol! Aiuto!” Somehow, her father was back, and he was calling her. He needed her. She had to listen.

  She ran on among the lemon trees and into the pinewoods, the warm light of the sun on her face and her arms.

  “Micol!” Her father kept calling.

  “I’m coming! Papà, I’m coming!”

  She ran, following her father’s voice, until she reached a small slope paved with strong-smelling brown pine needles. Lapo Falco was at the bottom of the slope, his chest and arms covered in bright-red wounds. He was bleeding out slowly – all over again. Except before, Micol hadn’t found him.

  Instead she’d stayed with Ranieri that day. The memory flashed before her eyes: his delirium had begun not long before, and Micol was terrified to leave him on his own. The two Falco Gamekeepers had just been killed, and her mother and Tancredi had gone hunting for the killers together. That day had been one of the rare times when her parents had gone hunting separately. Micol could recall such a thing happening three, maybe four times in her whole life. This time, their luck hadn’t held. Her father wasn’t found until he’d lost too much blood, and it was too late to do anything for him.

  She remembered her mother’s face when she was told her husband had died. Her eyes were empty all of a sudden, as if she’d lost the will to live. Not long after, she’d been dragged underground by a soil demon. Their hounds had found her buried in the pinewoods. Since then, Micol had been haunted by regret. If only she’d gone hunting with her father. If only she’d gone looking for him when he’d been absent for one hour rather than after a few hours. But Ranieri had been banging his head against the wall, screaming curses and nonsensical words, all that day. She’d been too terrified to leave him until it was too late. She’d been put in front of a choice, and she’d made the wrong decision.

  Maybe now she was being given a second chance, to change fate. Maybe this was her chance to put things right.

  “Micol, jump in, figlia mia!” Lapo begged, extending his bleeding arm. Micol threw herself on her knees, peering into the ditch. Multi-coloured charges were buzzing around her body, brought on by her distress. Lapo’s face, once handsome with the amber skin and almond eyes all his children had inherited, was a mask of pain, caked with blood and soil.

  Micol’s mind whirled. Maybe she could save him this time. And then her mother wouldn’t go on a suicidal mission alone, leaving Ranieri, Tancredi and her behind in her quest for death, and they’d both survive, and she wouldn’t be alone.

  “Papà! I’m here! Give me your hand!” she called, her arms stretching as far as they could. The walls of the ditch were so steep that she feared if she jumped in she would not be able to drag herself and her father out, and they’d both be stuck there, easy prey for any demons on the prowl.

  “I can’t reach. Jump down here. Please help me . . .”

  “If I jump in too neither of us will make it out!”

  “Don’t leave me here . . . Please don’t leave me here, Micol.” His chest was bright red. Pine needles stuck to the wet wounds in his skin, causing him pain Micol didn’t want to think about. She watched her father’s face lose its colour, becoming ashen. Through his pain, he struggled to speak. “You abandoned me once, Micol. Don’t do it again,” her father pleaded.

  His words cut deep, and Micol felt sick. She shut her eyes briefly, trying to think, trying to decide. Her best judgement was to go against her father’s desperate calls, but this was the man who had raised her, who had taught her to be fierce, to never give up, especially not on your family.

  She turned around, preparing herself to let her legs dangle off the ditch wall and throw herself down.

  “Don’t!” A voice had come from behind her. Micol’s heart skipped a beat as she looked up. It was her brother Tancredi, standing under the canopy of a pine tree – the shadows cast by the tree were such that she couldn’t fully make out his face. He was wearing the leather cape he used when he flew.

  “Tancredi! Is it really you?” She peered, not daring to step any closer.

  “It’s me, yes. My spirit. But that is not our father. Come away,” he said, taking a step towards her, his hand extended. As he walked out of the shadows so she could see his beloved face, she cried softly. It was really him, Tancredi. Her brother was back.

  Or was he? Who was telling the truth? Her brother or her father?

  “That thing is not our father. He’s a Guardian. He’s the sentinel of the stones, the third wave of evil. Micol, please. Step away from him, come with me.”

  Micol jerked her face left and right. Tancredi was on one side of her, his slender arm extended, her father on the other side, broken and bleeding at the bottom of a ditch, torn apart by Surari claws and fangs. “I must help him! He’ll die! Papà!” Micol called. She wanted it to be her father. She didn’t want him to be an illusion, or even worse, evil, this Guardian her brother (was it really her brother?) talked about.

  “Don’t listen to him, figlia mia. That’s not Tancredi. Come down here. Help me!”

  Tancredi echoed Lapo’s words. “He’s not our father. Please, Micol, you must believe me.”

  Micol took her face in her hands for a moment. “If he’s not our father, how do I know you are you?” she said in desperation.

  “Remember when you were so scared of the water? And I said to take my hand, that we’d jump together?”

  How could she ever forget?

  “Remember, Micol?”

  She nodded. “Si,” she said softly.

  “You trusted me then. Trust me now. Take my hand.”

  Slowly, Micol entwined her brother’s fingers with hers. They felt cold, icy to the touch. Together they stepped away from the slope.

  Just then a terrible growl came from inside the ditch. She looked at who she thought was her father, and immediately she wished she hadn’t. A red mass of muscles and fangs and claws, growling and snarling, blood and gore dripping down then taking shape again, had taken her father’s place. From an opening that looked like a misshapen mouth came one last call: “Micol . . .”

  But Tancredi was holding her by the shoulders. “It can’t hurt you, now that you know it’s lying. Sorellina, listen. I must go . . .”

  “Please don’t go!”

  “I can’t stay. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me. I’m at peace. Don’t forget me.”

  “Never!” Micol said among her tears, taking in her brother’s face one last time, and then she couldn’t see any more.

  When she woke up, the first thing she saw was soft grass – and someone lying beside her, someone she couldn’t recognise at first. And then it all came back to her. The figure lying on the ground was Niall Flynn, the Irishman. She was in the Shadow World. And there was Alvise, sitting on the grass beside them, blood on his chest – whose blood?

  “Micol!” he called. “Thank God, you are awake!”

  “I . . . I think so. Are you hurt?” she asked, gesturing to his chest.

  “No, I’m fine. The smoke is gone. Did you see . . . things?”

  Micol nodded. “I took his hand,” she said, her thoughts hazy. “Tancredi’s. He saved me.” Moving to Alvise, she wrapped her arms around his neck. The Venetian man held her tightly as she trembled in his arms. “Something was pretending to be my father. But it wasn’t. I had to make a choice. I still can’t believe I made the right one . . .” Suddenly, from over Alvise’s shoulder, she saw it again: the orange light, dancing beside the stones.

  The smoke enveloped Sean, and he fell like a dead weight. For a few seconds he saw dancing grass in front of him, swaying in the cold wind. A tiny spider crawled up a blade of grass, over a particle of soil and onwards, until it stood at the edge of it – and then
nothing.

  When he opened his eyes, a familiar face was above him. Fair skin and a mop of blonde hair, and green eyes, just like Sarah’s.

  “Harry?” he murmured.

  “Come on, mate. Time to get up. That was a good party last night!”

  Sean sat up and tried to get his bearings. The wooden sliding doors, soft light seeping from behind the paper that covered them; the thin square cushions on the floor; the kotatsu, the little table traditionally heated with hot coals, used to keep warm and have tea or sake on. He remembered many winter nights spent sipping tea at the kotatsu with his friends. The smile of a red-haired girl, the stories of hunting, the togetherness they’d experienced. All of the sights, sounds, experiences flooded back to him.

  Beyond a semi-open sliding door, Sean could see a sliver of the garden he used to know so well, with its koi fish pond and the little stone bridge.

  He was back in Kyoto, in the house the Ayanami family had given him to share with Harry, Elodie and Mary Ann. Sean’s head spun so violently he thought he’d throw up.

  “You are alive,” he whispered to Harry.

  “Barely, after last night! I don’t want to see a glass of sake for . . . until tonight.” He laughed. “How are you feeling?”

  “I . . . I’m fine.”

  “Good, because there’s something you need to do. Come on,” Harry said, and led him next door. In a room empty of everything but tatami, a black-haired girl stood with her back to the door, dressed in the black kimono of temple workers, a wide grey sash wrapped around her waist. With hair that dark and straight, you could have mistaken her for a Japanese girl, but Sean knew the shape of that body, the curve of those hips.

  “Sarah,” Sean breathed. It made no sense. It had to be a dream, a vision of some sort. It couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t really be back in Kyoto: Harry wasn’t alive, and Sarah had never been in Japan with them. It would be a long time before they met. No. None of this was true.