The Morrigan's Curse Read online

  DEDICATION

  To the teachers at the Avon Grove Intermediate School

  who kept telling me, “You can do this.”

  Sorry about all the snow days.

  FAMILY REFERENCE CHART FOR THE MORRIGAN’S CURSE

  TRANSITIONER FAMILIES WITH A SEAT AT THE TABLE

  Bedivere

  Bors (vassal to Dulac)

  Dulac

  Kaye (vassal to Pendragon)

  Lyonnesse

  Morgan

  Owens (recently deceased)

  Pellinore

  Pendragon

  Sagramore

  A PARTIAL LIST OF TRANSITIONER VASSALS

  Ambrose (vassal to Dulac)

  Aubrey (vassal to Emrys)

  Balin (vassal to Wylit)

  Crandall (vassal to Pendragon)

  Ganner (vassal to Dulac)

  Morder (half-Kin, vassal to Dulac)

  A PARTIAL LIST OF INDEPENDENT TRANSITIONERS

  Carroway

  Donovan

  KIN FAMILIES ALLIED WITH TRANSITIONERS

  Corra

  Emrys*

  Taliesin

  ADVERSARY KIN FAMILIES

  Aeron**

  Arawen (formerly confined to Oeth-Anoeth)

  Llyr (formerly confined to Oeth-Anoeth)

  Mathonwy

  Wylit

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Family Reference Chart for The Morrigan’s Curse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Dianne K. Salerni

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  NORMALLY, ADDIE EMRYS DIDN’T like heights, but in this case, the view was worth it. Leaning on the wooden railing of a second-floor balcony, she watched waves crash against rocks on the shore below, blasting themselves into wild sprays of foam. Addie had never seen an ocean before today. Lakes, yes. Her Transitioner foster parents had taken her to lakes, but even Lake Champlain was a puddle compared to this.

  She found herself mesmerized by the motion of the water. In Addie’s experience, natural bodies of water were always caught in the moment between two Normal days. Trapped within a single second that stretched over twenty-four hours, lakes lapped listlessly like water in a bathtub, streams lay as still as ponds, and waterfalls dripped like leaky faucets.

  The waves she was watching now were abnormal for the eighth day and roused by wind, which was also new to her. Addie raised her face, exulting in the cool air that brushed against her cheeks and rustled her ponytail. This was weather.

  Only magic could create weather on the eighth day, and for the last fifteen hundred years, the weather-working Llyrs had been confined to the bowels of Oeth-Anoeth, an ancient Welsh fortress that suppressed magical talents. Two days ago, an armed military force had broken into that fortress, releasing the only surviving descendants of the half dozen Kin families originally imprisoned there.

  Two Llyrs. One Arawen.

  Now free of their physical and magical constraints, the Llyrs were creating the first eighth-day weather since their ancestors had been captured centuries ago. Addie was on her way to watch them work their magic in person, but she had stopped here for a moment to enjoy this panoramic view: the vast ocean, the thin line of land in the distance that marked the coast of Maine, and the endless sky where dark clouds now swelled.

  Droplets of water struck her skin, but the sudden prickle of gooseflesh on her arms had nothing to do with the cold sea spray. Someone was trying to spy on her through a scrying spell again. Whoever it was, he was persistent. Turning around, Addie stared at the white stucco exterior of the house and imagined herself surrounded on all sides by walls like that one, hidden from view.

  The scryer could have been someone from her foster home, but Addie doubted it. More likely, it was the Dulacs, a ruthless Transitioner clan who’d imprisoned Addie and from whom she’d escaped only yesterday. Unfortunately she’d left plenty of herself behind that could be used for scrying: Hair. Bitten-off fingernail scraps. Blood.

  I am invisible behind my wall. Addie concentrated on her pulse, the rhythm of her blood rushing through her veins—the blood of an Emrys carrying the Eighth Day Spell through time. After a few seconds, her goose bumps subsided.

  “Again?” asked a voice from behind her. She turned to find Kel Mathonwy watching her from inside the glass balcony doors. “I didn’t want to break your concentration,” he said. The wind rustled his silvery hair, and he smoothed his side-swept bangs back into place, copying the famous style of a Normal pop star whose music neither Kel nor Addie had ever heard.

  “They’ve given up. For now.” Addie smiled at her old friend. Well, really, her new friend, who she’d known briefly a long time ago, back when his father had worked with her father on a daring and rebellious plan to countermand the Eighth Day Spell. As children, she and Kel had played games in the woods behind her house, in spite of her sister trying to keep them apart.

  Meeting Kel again a few days ago had been more than a coincidence. Addie thought it was a sign that she was destined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Getting captured by Dulacs immediately afterward had interrupted that destiny, but only until Kel came for her with the most astounding rescue party imaginable.

  “You should tell my father that someone’s been scrying for you,” Kel said, holding the glass door open for her. “And stay in the house, where you’re warded.” Kel’s father had a knack for protective wards, which were tricky to master.

  “There’s no reason to. I have a blocking spell.”

  “You’re going to exhaust yourself, casting a defensive spell over and over.”

  “No,” Addie said confidently. “I won’t.” She flashed Kel a grin.

  “Come on. You don’t want to miss the show, do you?” Kel led the way downstairs and through his house. His mansion, Addie corrected herself, admiring the spacious rooms with white carpets, suede furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows facing the sea. Bookshelves were filled with classics as well as recent best sellers. Newspapers and magazines were stacked on end tables, and expensive artwork adorned the walls. During Addie’s years at the way station run by her foster parents, she’d seen fugitive Kin pass through homeless and destitute. None of them had used their extended lives to amass such wealth by Normal means the way Kel’s father, Madoc Mathonwy, had.

  Of course, it helped that the Mathonwy magical talent was prosperity.

  She and Kel exited through the ground floor by way of patio doors and hurried along the path to the airplane hangar. On the tarmac, a group of people were watching three figures at
the end of the runway. Kel’s father stood among the larger group, calmly smoking a cigarette and looking smug. It was Madoc’s long-term planning and wealth that had brought this cabal of powerful Kin together. Addie supposed he had every right to be pleased with himself.

  With him were members of the Aeron clan—the muscle behind Madoc’s brain. The Aerons were gifted with a talent for invoking havoc and mayhem. The day prior to Addie’s rescue from the Dulacs, the Aerons had manned military aircraft purchased by Kel’s father to break the Llyrs out of Oeth-Anoeth in Wales. In the gloom of the gathering dark clouds, their faces seemed ghostly and devilish. The Aerons made a habit of adorning their faces with fearsome tattoos to celebrate their achievements, and all those present had earned new ones for their role in the triumphant assault on the medieval Welsh fortress.

  At the end of the runway, Bran Llyr, leader of the most famous family imprisoned in Oeth-Anoeth, faced the sea and shouted ancient words into the wind. In one hand he held a staff, and his long, straight white hair flew behind his head like a flag. Beside him, his son, Griffyn, muttered his own spells, his brow compressed in concentration. Griffyn was eighteen or nineteen years old, and he, too, had long hair, although his was braided like a medieval warrior’s. The final member of the trio was a girl, as tall as Griffyn and almost as broad across the shoulders. Ysabel Arawen wasn’t a weather-worker—the Arawen talent was darker and more morbid—but she loaned her strength to Griffyn through their clasped hands.

  They still wore the clothing they’d escaped in—coarse cloth trousers and tunics. Griffyn and Ysabel also wore leather jerkins, with throwing daggers strapped to their arms and legs that made them look like they’d stepped out of the Middle Ages. From the little Addie knew, imprisonment at Oeth-Anoeth had been sort of like being trapped in medieval times. Ten generations of the Llyr and Arawen families, along with several others, had lived their lives in that fortress, dying out over the centuries until only these three individuals remained.

  Freed from their prison, the survivors had flown from Wales to Greenland to this island—and then, at Kel’s urgent summons, straight to New York City to rescue Addie.

  Addie was, after all, the most important Kin girl on the planet, the sole remaining member of the Emrys family and the only person left to carry the Eighth Day Spell in her bloodline. If Addie died, the eighth day would cease to exist, along with thousands of members of the Kin race, all of whom existed solely within that day.

  Addie’s parents had been killed years ago, and she’d recently learned that her brother and sister were dead as well. In fact, according to her Dulac captors, her older sister, Evangeline—the smart one, the good one, their father’s favorite—had died only five days ago while attempting to break the Eighth Day Spell in Mexico. Addie knew she should feel grief, pain—something—but it had been almost half her lifetime since she’d seen her sister. Addie didn’t know how to grieve for her.

  Instead she watched the growing storm.

  Powerful magic came naturally to the Llyrs, even if Oeth-Anoeth had suppressed it all their lives. Addie had seen Bran wield lightning several times during their harrowing escape from New York in the early hours of this morning—at least during the parts when she wasn’t covering her eyes in terror. But even that paled by comparison to what he was doing now. Thunderclouds grew into a city above the sea, with black skyscrapers towering heavenward and lightning arching like bridges between them. Rain plunged down in sheets. Addie’s clothing clung to her skin.

  Then Kel nudged her with an elbow and pointed at a rocky protrusion about a quarter mile offshore—a knobby twist of land not large enough to be called an island. In the rain and darkness, Addie barely made out the figure standing on rocks with black objects circling overhead. Addie’s mouth fell open to exclaim that one of the Aeron girls must’ve gotten herself stranded offshore and needed rescuing—and then it dawned on her that the circling objects were crows. Her warning cry withered on her tongue.

  Bran Llyr barked out a final command and thrust his staff into the air. The monstrous storm moved southward, away from the island. He laughed with satisfaction, then turned to look at the rocky outcropping.

  Addie looked again too. The girl was gone.

  “Did you see her, Madoc?” Bran demanded, in an accent Addie vaguely identified as “British,” but which she knew must be Welsh.

  Madoc exhaled cigarette smoke. “I did. Closer this time than last.”

  “You’ve seen her before?” Kel asked incredulously.

  “She was on the hillside above Oeth-Anoeth two days ago,” said Condor Aeron, leader of his clan.

  “And Ysabel saw her outside the Dulac building yesterday, while you were freeing Addie,” Madoc added. The Arawen girl nodded in agreement.

  The Girl of Crows was one of the three incarnations of the Morrigan, a supernatural force of chaos and destruction. The Girl was known to nudge events in the direction of chaotic conflict, while her Woman form prophesied death and the Crone changed the fates of individuals.

  Addie shivered in her wet clothes. That makes two of them I’ve seen now.

  “Where did you send the storm?” Kel asked Bran Llyr.

  Bran waved a hand dismissively. “To that city—that nest of Transitioners. What was it called?”

  “New York,” said Addie, marveling that these ex-prisoners were so ignorant of the modern world they didn’t even know the name of New York City.

  Just then, she felt the skin on her arms and neck prickle. The would-be spy was at it again, scrying for her mere minutes after the last time. Oh, very clever—trying to catch her off guard. Too bad he didn’t know who he was dealing with!

  Whirling around, Addie faced the hangar where Madoc kept his personal plane. She pictured herself surrounded on all sides by featureless wooden planks like the painted white boards on this building, creating a fortress of them in her mind. Behind her, she heard Kel tell his father how she’d been repeatedly fighting off this scryer since midnight. Addie tried not to listen, focusing instead on her secret source of strength and her intent to block the spell.

  Bran’s voice, however, insisted on being heard. “Look at me, child.” Addie glanced up, and Bran placed a rough hand on her forehead.

  Blinding-white heat shot through her head, ripping a scream from her. Everything went black and spotty, colors winking in the darkness. When sight returned, she found herself lying on the tarmac. She gasped, over and over, trying not to vomit, and looked up with shock at Bran.

  “There,” the Llyr lord said with pride. “Let’s see if the person on the other end of that spell appreciates my little gift.”

  2

  IN A MOTEL ROOM outside New York City, Jax Aubrey watched his liege lady arrange a pan of water, a package of saffron, and torn pages of a letter on the table in front of her. If he was counting correctly, this would be Evangeline’s seventh attempt today at casting a scrying spell for her younger sister. She’d made two tries shortly after reappearing last night at midnight and had taken only a few hours’ break to sleep before starting again. For Jax, a week had passed since Addie Emrys had escaped from the Dulacs with the help of the evil Llyr clan, but for Evangeline and her sister, who lived eighth day to eighth day, it had been only yesterday.

  “Is she hidden behind wards?” Jax asked.

  “Today she is,” Evangeline replied. “But for the first few hours after midnight last night she was actively blocking me.”

  “Doesn’t she know it’s you?”

  “She has no way of knowing who it is,” Evangeline replied grimly. “And she’s got every reason to fight off someone spying on her.” Jax nodded. Addie had been held for days in a Dulac basement prison. She probably thought they were the ones trying to locate her. “But blocking my spell will tire her,” Evangeline added. “If I catch her outside the wards, I will break through. We need to know where the Llyrs took her after they got away from Sheila Morgan’s clan this morning.”

  Jax wasn’t so sure Evangeline wo
uld break through. Casting the spell was exhausting her, too. Her hands trembled as she pried apart the plastic tabs on the saffron container. “I think you should rest first, like you said you would,” he told her. Evangeline had promised Riley she would sleep before trying again, but as soon as he and A.J. Crandall had gone out to the motel parking lot to change the fluids in Riley’s motorcycle, she’d gotten up.

  “I can’t sleep, Jax. I have to know if she’s okay. She’s in as much danger from our side as she is from the Llyrs.”

  Jax understood Evangeline’s desperation. They’d come close to rescuing her sister from the Dulacs last Grunsday, missing her by mere minutes. And in the early hours of this Grunsday, Addie had presumably been present during a skirmish that ended with a number of Transitioners from the Morgan clan dead and the renegade Kin escaping.

  Adelina Emrys had gotten out of the frying pan and landed right in a very hot fire.

  On the last eighth day, a couple of hours before midnight, the Llyrs and their unknown allies had left the Dulac building in Manhattan with Addie. Since they couldn’t have gotten very far before their secret, isolated day ended, Sheila Morgan—head of the clan leading the search—assumed the Kin had a place to hide for the seven days they skipped over. The Morgans had spent a week scouting the area, and on Wednesday, multiple armed teams had positioned themselves to intercept the Kin wherever they reappeared.

  On Wednesday evening, a few hours before the eighth day began, Riley had sent his vassal Arnold Crandall to the Morgan headquarters to serve as a courier of information between their clans, since telephones didn’t work on the eighth day. Meanwhile, Riley had chosen this motel as a base. It was far enough from the action to keep Evangeline safe, but close enough that they could get into the city quickly if Addie’s location was discovered—or if Evangeline saw her through the scrying spell.

  However, Evangeline’s scrying efforts had failed, and by dawn they’d received bad news from Mr. Crandall. An aircraft had been spotted taking off from a field south of the city, and two planes sent by the Morgans to intercept it had been knocked from the sky by lightning. Transitioner forces had acquired a description of the enemy plane and the heading it was on, although they suspected those headings were a feint in the wrong direction, because no one had seen the plane since.