The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Read Online Free PDF Page A

intoxicating perfume of her fear. The ghost continued, narrowing her eyes: “Pity you can’t cross over to the living realm to find her yourself. Perhaps a higher power indeed gave us that advantage. The doors have been blown wide, and your enemy aches for a fight,” she warned, nodding to the corridor behind them.
    A sudden racket prevented Darkness from questioning her further; a host of separate battle cries in every tongue and custom coalesced into a thunderous shout. He turnedto behold a mob of grey spirit bodies in all manner of dress, a tumbling, angry sea of Guard. While their service was long since spent, it seemed they remembered their pasts. They invoked their sacred rites against him as they’d done for eons, disparate cultures made one with a binding language. Music rose in the air. There was enough magic left in them yet to try a fight. But the fact remained that they were trapped in his territory.
    Darkness chuckled. He raised a fist. Water and shadows leaped to life in the form of dread horses, dark with gnashing teeth. The beasts charged, stampeding, wet and chomping for scraps of dead flesh. The Guards’ battle song was drowned by thunderous hooves. Their advance halted, the spirits were driven mercilessly back. Squeezing his fists, Darkness pressed forward the suffocating shadows until voices cried out in agony. This restored a momentary, soothing sense of control, and he reveled in it.
    A tapping drew his attention back to the nearby spirit. Desperately chanting something foreign, she rapped upon the heart of the seal between mortal and spirit world. A circle of blue fire flashed against the stone. Looking over her shoulder with enough smug triumph to infuriate him, she stepped nearly through to the other side. With only her head remaining, she hissed, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve work to do. Have a lovely time cleaning up your mess.” Then she vanished along with the fire she’d created.
    Darkness whipped shadows forward in a vicious blow, but these fell uselessly against the stone. Damn them! Damn her. War, indeed. He’d make it all come undone—every last mortal mind—and bring his rebellious prize home screaming. He’d break her divine body to his eternal will for every season.
    Beatrice Tipton forced her essence back into the colonnaded, circular room that she recognized well, this sacred space where everything had very nearly gone wrong justhours prior, and murmured thanks to the Phoenix fire for facilitating such coming and going. Free of the oppressive terror that was Darkness, grateful he could not follow, she prayed that Ibrahim would be spared pain if he were again taken hostage. Darkness would not punish him further, as they’d not been seen together, and for that she was grateful. Aodhan had been more help to her than she’d known. To have a friend in the daunting tasks ahead was a comfort she dared not take for granted.
    She beheld the sacred space and scowled. “Good God, all of you made a right mess of it in here, didn’t you?” There were cracks in the walls and ash in the stones; the stained-glass ceiling of the burning-heart bird showed hairline fissures in its beautiful panes.
    At the centre of the floor, Beatrice bent over the great feather in the stone, blowing dust and grit aside. She touched her locket and opened her opposite hand. Blue fire leaped from her fingertips. Hurling it at the feather’s tip, she saw a wisp of blue smoke curl up from a keyhole. “The groundwork is laid. The first key ready to reveal its mysteries. Now, to knit the worlds. Ibrahim, don’t worry. We’ll free you as soon as we’ve the advantage.” Then she flew from the floor, heaving a sigh. Blue fire coursed over her body, invigorating her, inside and out. “I hadn’t thought it would feel so refreshing to be at Work again! Come now, my lady. To war!”

C HAPTER T HREE
    Miss Persephone Parker lay deep in the honeyed thick of dreams, shifting between terrible vision and wonderful