Page 6 of The Crimson Princess (The Ravengale Chronicles #1)

Chapter four

Satima Ravengale

San Francisco, Ten Years Later…

H appy birthday to me , I think, as I shove a zombie against an alley wall, stabbing the grotesque creature in the brain, rotting flesh flopping to the ground beside me, but I barely blink.

When you see them often enough rotting skin and teeth are like curdled milk, unpleasant and in need of disposal.

I yank my blade out of the zombie’s face and rotate just in time to jab the one coming at me right between the eyes.

I exterminate another two eyesores before I end up standing in front of my mother, sheathing my blade.

Between the two of us there’s a good ten bodies cluttering up the ground in our immediate visual.

And since guardians and royals possess the ability to banish the dead to the Garden of Crimson and Death in the Third World, with a wave of my mother’s hand, they’re gone.

Upon arrival, the Third World will judge the bulk of the masses and send them to either paradise a.k.a.

Nirvana, where roses bleed happiness, or to Hades, where the roses bleed poison and punishment.

“Could The Zombie Pit be too full?” I ask, referencing the most feared place to be sent upon arrival to Third World. If you’re judged the worst of the worst, you’re thrown in the pit, perpetually running from the zombies there until you are turned yourself.

“The Zombie Pit is eternally deep,” my mother reminds me. “Their crack in the portal allows this to happen.”

“You don’t think it feels like more than normal? ”

“It reads high average to me, but not excessive. Maybe they all want to celebrate your birthday with us,” she teases, sliding her own blade into the holster. “Cake time?”

“Yes, please.”

A few minutes later we are sitting at a bar called Mel’s where the scent of vodka and rum is as loud as the music, with two cups of coffee and two slices of the best cake in San Francisco.

The first time I heard about their famous cake, I laughed.

I’m not laughing now. We’re halfway through our slices, when I hear, “Sophie Gale. Just the PI I was looking for.”

At the sound of Detective Eric Waters’ raspy, cigarette-laden voice, my mother sighs. “I just wanted to spend the rest of the night with my daughter.”

The truth is that my mom has brilliantly set-up a PI cover story that allows us to get close to law enforcement.

We are now who they come to when the case gets weird or creepy.

And as of late, the city has been getting weirder and creepier and yet the crack in the portal doesn’t seem to have increased in size.

Eric appears on the opposite side of my mother. He’s tall, with dark hair, the barely there peppering of gray, and little crinkles by his eyes, aging him to his forties. “Hey there, Hopscotch.”

He calls her that because he claims she plays games with him, but really, she just protects him from the truth. There really are things that go bump in the night. Plus, he has a crush on her, but no matter how separate they are at times, my mother only has eyes for my father.

“Any answers on that case I ran by you? The one where the guy’s attorney swears he’s possessed.”

“That’s half the cases you bring me,” my mother says dryly, “and I’m not on the clock right now. It’s Satima’s birthday and we’re celebrating.”

He leans forward and grins at me. “Happy birthday, Satima. Sorry your mom took you to a bar to party.”

“You must not have tried the cake or you would understand,” I say, “and technically my birthday is in an hour. ”

“So you’re celebrating tonight and tomorrow. That’s the way to milk it. How old?”

“Twenty-three,” I say, the Ravengale version of twenty-one, as I finally come into my full powers.

There’s a crashing sound behind us and I drop my fork, and whip around at the same moment my mother and Eric do the same.

And then, right in front of our eyes, all around us the bar erupts into fights, people punching each other, kicking each other.

Eric included. He and the guy next to him have started pounding on each other.

The only two unaffected are me and my mother.

“The portal?” I ask in earnest, casting my mom a concerned look.

“The portal,” she agrees, capturing my hand and blinks us out of the bar. I still can’t blink, but I’m hoping with my impending change, that will be a problem of the past.

We appear at the edge of the Golden Gate bridge, rather than in the center, where the portal is located, a sign of my mother’s caution.

Blinding fog consumes the night air, visibility almost zero, a barrier over the entrance, forbidding traffic from entry.

Thankfully, that means no prying eyes to avoid, a circumstance that makes our jobs easier, especially since the fog has habitually indicated the portal is leaking nasty Third World monsters, and at an unusually high rate.

In unison my mother and I open our hands, a ball of light forming in each of our palms, and despite its magical source, it does nothing to permeate the fog.

There’s something different about this fog, an energy here I’ve never felt.

With a frustrated shared look, we extinguish the worthless lights and ease forward, an eerie silence almost deafening.

We’re almost to the center of the bridge when a thundering sound roars toward us and I gasp as our attackers pierce the fog.

Beasts, so many beasts, fanged and hideous, products of someone’s or something’s magic, charge us.

My mother shoves me back and steps in front of me.

I tumble backward and land on the ground and by the time I’ve kicked myself to my feet, the beasts surround my mother .

I funnel my magic toward the beasts with every intention of blasting them away from her, but it does nothing.

They tower over my mother and I can’t see her anymore.

Something is not right. I pull the magical guardian dagger from my boot, a weapon she insists I carry, despite it belonging to her.

She earned it in the Challenge, and all of Ravengale cheered as she accepted it in the closing ceremony.

The hilt is adorned with a cluster of gale green stones, and the razor-sharp blade, cut with magic, digs deeper than otherwise possible, allowing it to pierce thick monster flesh.

With it as my weapon, I lunge for the beast closest to me.

I’m at his back, just as she taught me, and I reach around and take out one of his eyes and then the other.

He flails about, trying to throw me off of him, and I stab him in the jugular, blood spurting everywhere.

I’m ridiculously relieved as he falls hard, and I jump off of him before I go down, too.

Another beast comes at me, and I become aware of my mother battling another.

I defeat the beast with another jugular hit and as he collapses on the hard asphalt of the highway, I find my mother bleeding from her arm and I don’t know where else, but I can’t think about that now.

She’s still fighting, kneeling beneath the portal, her hands up as she funnels her magic toward the opening, trying to seal it.

We are forever stronger together and I take a knee beside her, and lift my hands, adding my magic to hers, unloading everything I possess into ending this nightmare, protecting this city.

A mere hour from now, I will come of age, and that magic will be stronger, and I will it here, now, but I feel nothing new, nothing more inside me.

One by one, we strike down the beasts who attack us, as they fall from the sky, crashing around us, but I can feel a force ramming against our magic.

I push to my feet, squeeze my eyes shut, and will my magic to grow stronger, to conquer whatever is coming at us.

I feel the portal begin to close, the energy shifting, calming.

It’s so close, and yet, I feel a tear inside me, a rip of my soul.

The end of all that I love. I know even before the fog fades and the beasts disappear, that my mother is gone .

I come back to this world with a jolt of my magic and seek her out, finding her lifeless body crumpled, bloody, and beaten next to me.

I collapse beside her, and half of her throat is gone.

Just…gone. I tilt my head back and let out a bellow of torment.

“Why?!” I scream at the sky above, at the damn Third World that tore her away from me. “Why?!”

There will never be another smile shared between us, no more birthdays celebrated, nor a word spoken between us. I can’t even say goodbye to her. I can’t ever speak another word to her ever again in this lifetime. Guilt and tears overtake me. I had her dagger. Why did I take her dagger?

The air shifts, and my father appears, and somehow, I push to my feet and face him. We step toe to toe. “She’s gone,” I say, hugging myself, shivering.

“I know, my love. I know.” He grabs me and pulls me to him, his forehead against mine. “I felt it happen.” But he doesn’t look at her. Why doesn’t he look at her?

Anger blasts through me hard and fast, and I shove against him. “She loved you. Why did you let her come here?! So you could have all the women you wanted?”

His energy jackknifes around me. “I loved your mother. I will always love her.”

“If you loved her, she wouldn’t be here! Bring her back!”

“I can’t do that.”

“You own the Book of Life and through it the magical stones.” I grab the lapels of his gale uniform, my fingers curling around the cloth. “Bring her back.”

“Satima—”

“Bring her back!” I shout it with every part of my soul, even as cars begin to race toward us, so close, too close. I shove him. “Bring her back!”

But all my father does is waves his hand and we are swept away from this world and returned to Ravengale.

We reappear in my parents’ room, with my mother on their bed, and we are the three of us, one last time.

Wordlessly, me and my father sit on either side of her.

There are no words to be found. No words adequate enough to pierce this moment.

He shows no emotion. He doesn’t cry and I hate that he is here.

I hate that I feel he will think I’m weak for melting down, but inside that is exactly what is happening.

She was my best friend. Living with humans, she was my only friend.

And now she is gone, and despite my father’s presence, I’m alone.

So very alone. I’m done trying to hold it together.

I collapse on top of her, my body quaking, and I can feel the change inside me.

I can feel the hollow where there was happiness.

I will never be the same.

I will never be okay again in this lifetime.