Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

The Mystic spoke, but Prue couldn’t make out the words. It was something intoned to herself, as if she were assuring herself of her own beliefs. The Governess looked at her askance, before striding the short distance to the waiting Plinth. With her free hand, she drew a long dagger from her belt. Prue, desperate, jumped forward.

“Please, Alexandra!” she cried. “Don’t do this!”

Alexandra stopped and looked over at Prue. She flared her eyes. “Please, if you don’t mind,” she said, “I hadn’t expected an audience to this. This is a great moment for me. I’d like it to not be ruined by the miserable mewlings of a little girl and an old woman.”

“That’s my brother you’ve got there,” said Prue. “That’s my parents’ only son. You don’t know how much it would break their hearts.”

“Then they shouldn’t have made the deal,” replied Alexandra. “They were foolish, those Outsiders, but they certainly knew what they wanted. They wanted you.” Here the Dowager Governess pointed the knife at Prue. “And so they got you. Congratulations. You were born. I held up my side of the bargain. Come to think of it, if anyone is truly responsible for your brother’s death and your parents’ heartbreak, it’s you. Your very existence, your parents’ need for your existence, is the true root of this entire debacle. I’m merely a player i

n the drama.” She moved a few more feet toward the Plinth; she was now within a few yards.

“Would you have fed Alexei to the ivy in order to assume such power?” This came from Iphigenia, her voice firm.

The Governess froze.

“Would you?” pressed the Elder Mystic. “He was a baby once, I’m sure you recall. Such a beautiful child, that one.”

The color rose in Alexandra’s pale face, and she turned angrily toward Iphigenia. “I told you, old woman, not to distract me from my purpose. You both are becoming very irritating.”

“Poor Alexei,” said Iphigenia. “Not even your magics could bring him back into the world of the living.”

“But I did!” shouted Alexandra, her temper finally piqued. “I gave him life. Twice. I’d breathed life into that body once, why not a second time? Why should that be any different? It was his choice to die the second time. He could not appreciate the labor that I”—she pounded the hilt of the dagger against her chest—“that I underwent to give him new life. Each time. My idiot nephew and his underlings gave him his second death; they killed him and then they used his death as a motive to throw me from power. And so they will pay. They will pay with their lives. And their families’ lives.” The Governess regained her composure, her dagger at the ready. Mac was still crying in her arms, his face a deep red. “It’s really that simple.”

Prue, unmoored from her fears, leapt forward at a sprint and dove into the space between Alexandra and the Plinth, pressing her back against the cold stone of the short edifice. “Stop!” she yelled.

Rage distorted Alexandra’s porcelain features. She whipped the dagger in a clean arc across her body, slapping Prue on the cheek with the flat of the blade. The force of the blow sent Prue cartwheeling sideways into the plush tangle of the ivy. A sharp flush of pain burned at her cheek; a trickle of blood wet her lip.

“Do not,” Alexandra said forcefully, “do not keep me from my task.”

The sun had reached its zenith. It was noon. Prue could feel the ivy moving, slowly, underneath her.

“. . . three,” intoned the fox.

The ragtag remnants of the Wildwood Irregulars on the stone outcrop let out a collective howl and leapt up from their concealed position behind the low stone wall.

A barrage of bullets and gunpowder filled the air as they began this final assault.

Curtis whipped his saber from his scabbard and went bounding down the flight of stairs with a terrific holler.

The wall of coyote soldiers before them stood up from their cover and took aim at the advancing soldiers.

The crows in the neighboring trees launched from their perches and dove toward the fray.

A bandit sprinting next to Curtis took a bullet in his chest and fell back in a spray of dirt.

Another farmer tumbled to the ground, an arrow lodged in his furry gullet.

Curtis braced himself as he ran, ready for the hit that would send him, too, to the soil.

Time slowed to a near stop.

KEE-YEP! KEE-YEP!

Curtis looked up to see a vast fleet of eagles as they coursed over the Irregulars’ heads, diving down from the air behind the promontory. The pale gray sky was obliterated by an ocean of birds in flight.

“The Avians!” shouted Sterling.

The wave of flyers crashed into the descending crows, the crows’ terrible caws of fear and pain profaning the air above the fighters on the ground, all of whom had stopped in their warring, spellbound, to watch the amazing scene play out overhead. More birds came from the south; a tide of falcons and ospreys, owls and kestrels filled the sky. Their manifold voices, chiming their cumulative battle cry, were deafening.