Havermouth, Present Time“This is going to be close,” Connery murmured as he painted the last lines of the rune. “And we’d better hope that this works.”“Just as a backup, though, right?” Meguitte watched through the window as Sigrid led Leighton and Verina across the street.“We’ll see what the Mer have in their magic bag, first,” Connery agreed. “This is just in case they fail to deliver. I’m reluctant to use it for multiple reasons, as you know.”She did. For starters, they weren’t confident at all about the runes used. Rather than replicate Leighton’s spell precisely, without knowing what the runes they weren’t familiar with did, they had decided to try to substitute the more commonly known runes that they believed shared commonalities with Leighton’s mysterious ones, and that would make sense in the usage.Secondly, in order to hide the runes from Leighton, they’d had to space them fairly wide and disguise them in the scenery. The bigger the circle, the more space between runes,
Havermouth, Present TimeThe Salem’s bunker was cunningly hidden behind a wine rack in the cellar. The stairs down to the cellar were a tight metal spiral designed to make the most of a space made tight due to the repurposing of the majority of it to safe accommodation for two during a war. Anne Mason struggled with the steep, tight, descent, but held onto her dignity as tightly as she did the handrail until she’d reached the ground, squeezing past Jules and through the opened door, to the reinforced space where Lauren and the two children were exploring the cupboards.“No, thanks, but if grandma can make it down, so can I,” Toby declined Harry’s offer of help. “The stomach muscles are on the mend,” he added as he took the descent one stair at a time. “It’s my head that’s the problem. My brain still thinks that there’s a major wound there and tells me I can’t move properly.”“It will take time to recover,” Jules said with empathy wriggling his fingers in demonstration. “And some wound
Havermouth, Present TimeAislen could hear people yelling and screaming above the ringing of her ears and the crackle of flame. There was a crash of something collapsing into rubble. She had been tossed like a ragdoll by the magical explosion of the combination of the Mer Sirens’ power and Leighton’s into the doorway of one of the shops, the solid bases of brick and tile sheltering her even though the bay windows had cracked and shattered inwards.The smoke was thick catching at the back of her throat so that she coughed, tears streaming down her face, her eyes stinging and her lungs straining for air. She could see through its drifts that the buildings closer to the bridge were all burning, the flames licking the sky.Everything ached. She had landed hard on her hip, knee, and elbow from the pain that radiated from each point. She sat up slowly and groaned as the baby within her reacted, the surface of her stomach tightening, and the sensation of pressure downward increasing. She lean
Havermouth, Present TimeThe Sirens’ song held Sigrid frozen in fascination as they focused their power on Leighton. She had not realized just how beautiful a sound could be. It seemed to reach into her very soul, to every fiber of her being. She could almost see the sound, the sparkle of sun on pure azure water, the dart of silver-scaled fish through the darkness, the blossoming of vividly bright ocean flowers.Tears gathered in her eyes, and she reached out gripping on to Greg and Dan’s forearms, wanting to share the elation of the experience with them.“What is this? What are you…?” Leighton’s cry drew her gaze from the Sirens to where Verina had collapsed onto her knees and Leighton cradled her in his arms. “Verina!” Was a shriek of alarm and despair.“This isn’t what we agreed to!” Aislen’s plea was directed at Niarthen and was sharp with fear.The Mer man’s expression was one of concern and confusion. It was not what he had expected either, Sigrid realized, her eyes returning to
Havermouth, Present TimeSamuel circled high in the sky watching below as the Mer approached the bridge. So far, there was nothing about the Mer approach to be alarmed about. It seemed as if the Mer were doing precisely what they had discussed with the Emissary.A glint in the distance however caught his eye. For a moment he debated staying and watching the meeting or investigating. He decided to investigate. His heart began to race when he saw that the Mer had infiltrated the streets of the town. They had encountered the first roadblock and had divided up to investigate alternative routes so that the little side streets and alleys glittered with Mer in armour. Further into the town, he caught a shift of light – something moving that was reflecting the scenery around it. Camouflage.They were headed towards where the streets were busy with pedestrian traffic. That in itself was unusual for Havermouth. The civilians had been told to keep movement to the minimal, to seek shelter, and st
Havermouth, Present TimeRhett decided very quickly that whilst he didn’t like flying, he liked landing even less. The explosion sent him and Cameron flying along the main road. At the same time, it flipped one of the abandoned cars onto its side and when they landed, slammed up against the concrete base of a lingerie shop, the car followed behind them. For a moment, he thought they were going to pan-caked between the car and the wall, but the car hooked on a lamppost, and instead of killing them, it saved their lives as a moment later, a ball of fire sizzled up against it.The shop window behind them warped and shattered with the heat, and the lingerie on the mannequins smouldered into flame. Rhett grabbed Cameron and dragged him away as the burning shreds of fabric rained down.In his head he heard Aislen call his name, and he looked up, trying to see her. They hadn’t been standing far from each other. But the smoke was fucking thick and rank around him. His lungs stung to breath th
Havermouth, Present TimeTalen was on fire. He had been thrown by the explosion through the window of a shop, and the fireball that had followed had torn the wood and metal of the structure down over him, along with shelving and stock. His head had struck the concrete flooring hard enough that he had blacked-out, and it wasn’t until the pain of his beard catching alight registered that he was shocked back into alertness. He fought his way free of the burning debris and slapped out the fire that scorched hair and flesh, his hand coming away with black char and wet skin. How long had he lay slowly burning?(Talen! Are you okay?) Morgana cried out in his mind.(A little singed around the edges) he lied. He was far from okay. His hands and chest shrieked in pain, and he could feel that the fabric knit stuck to the burnt skin below its charred surface, but his neck and cheek no longer hurt. The area felt stiff, fragile, and foreign - as if it did not quite belong to him. He knew that to be
Havermouth, Present TimeNiarthen had been betrayed was the first thought Lyric had as she’d surfaced in the river after the explosion. The second was that she hoped the vampire blood-cure was still effective even after so long. She swam to the bank at Niarthen’s side and fought their way through the weeds up onto the land, and then out of the undergrowth onto the main street, where she stopped to gape at the destruction.The buildings to either side were burning and collapsing inwards, and smoke pouring thickly onto the street, seeming drawn there, its swirls pushing up against an invisible barrier.“Are you injured?” The vampiress Sigrid appeared abruptly on the road by them and Lyric jumped, her hand going to the weapon on her hip. The woman was filthy, covered in soot so that it appeared as if she wore a mash, her eyes and teeth bright in contrast.Niarthen seemed less surprised by her arrival. “Nothing serious.”“You are injured,” Lyric removed her helmet as she saw that the vamp