Icarus continues. Just mass posting a bunch of chapters because I did a ton of work on this. As always, any comments or demands for changes or notes are beyond welcome so feel free to hurt my feelings. I'm very tough to rattle.

Chapter 3

The horses were the first to sense the wrongness of the thatched farmhouse. They whinnied and hesitated, attempting to turn back on their own. Icarus coaxed his with gentle clucks and whispered words of affirmation. Maren stroked the neck of her mare until she calmed enough to be tethered at the hitching post. They observed the house first -- windows shuttered, one left open for light revealed empty panes where glass should be. 

No animals bellowed in the field. No chickens clucking content or sheep bleating with impatience. It was eerily quiet. Groaning wood pulled their heightened attention to the door. A man -- mid forties, gray at the temples, impressive mustache obscuring his mouth -- stood wild-eyed and exhausted. He beckoned them to the house and disappeared back inside. 

The two priests exchanged a look and Icarus took the lead. Mud gave under his boots unpleasantly. He wiped his feet on the woven straw doormat and paused at the threshold. From his pocket he withdrew a rosary, polish long since worried away. He wrapped it around his hand and stepped inside. Behind him, Maren reached into one of her pouches and withdrew a handful of salt mixed with dried thyme and yarrow. She poured it from her hand like a funnel in a perfect, practiced line along the doorway before stepping over it into the large living room. It glowed faint ivory in the dark. 

The man wiped his hands on a towel, too tired to study them or be concerned about what they were, “Thank you for coming on short notice, Father… ah…”

“Ulrich. Icarus, if you like,” he supplied and gestured, “and Father Maren Fowler. You must be Argus.”

Argus eyed the line of salt with a weary nod, “Aye. A salt magician. Been a long time since one has been ‘round these hills.”

Maren inclined her head before taking in the room. When she spotted the two terrified faces huddled on the straw-filled sofa, she tilted her head in greeting, “Dia dhuit. Hello.”

The girls were younger than he had expected, probably twelve and fifteen. Margaret’s file had her at nineteen, but it did not register exactly how young that was until then. Much too young for whatever was happening to her. They scrambled to the corner of the mattress and huddled together. It seemed they still had the energy to bend to ignorance about what they were. 

“I’ll take you to her,” Argus offered with a note of apology he would never speak aloud, “Connor has been keeping vigil by the door.”

They climbed the creaking stairs and caught the whispering prayers in the breeze that crossed the paneless windows. Margaret’s husband sat propped against a sealed door papered with pages of the Pale Doctrine likely set by Father Simon during his first attempt. At the sight of the two priests, he scrambled to his feet and thumbed his rosary. 

“Dia dhuit,” he nodded, dark hair falling across his forehead he attempted to flick away, “thank you, Fathers. Thank you for coming. My wife…”

“Tell us how it started,” Icarus scanned the pages and read the prayers and spells, giving Connor something to do while he did.

The trembling young man nodded, “Yes. Well. She said she was going to the field to pick wild thyme and rosemary. She was always vigilant about those things, always keeping the doorways protected. Anyway, she was late coming back. Very late. We were getting ready to search the fields when we saw her.”

“Walking up the road like she was sleeping,” Argus interjected. “She didn’t react until I shook her, then she screamed like I’d woken her from a nightmare.”

“She slept for two days,” Connor continued, “and barely ate. She was paranoid, far away. I caught her talking to herself in the middle of the night, standing in a corner of the room. Then… then she started… knowing things.”

“Things she should not,” the two men spoke like a call and response, filling in the beats for each other when it was too much, “about me, Connor, her sisters. Her mother. When she broke the chickens’ necks, we called for Father Franklin to come sit with her a while. After that, she terrorized her sisters. Hiding under their beds, dragging them into closets. She stabbed Molly in the leg with a fork and we couldn’t let her roam around anymore so we… shackled her. Made sure she stayed put.”

Connor was nodding along, tears shining at the rim of his eyes. Icarus took a step back from the door, “Franklin said she… skitters. Can you explain that?”

The men exchanged alarmed looks. Neither of them moved to speak and he did not offer an alternative to the question. Behind the door, he heard something shuffling. Slow at first, then faster. Wary. Unsure. It sensed him on the other side. 

“When she moves,” Argus swallowed hard, “she crouches low, like she’s walking on her finger and toenails. It makes this scratching sound on the wood. When she’s in a fury, her hands burn the floorboards.”

“She hides under the bed?” Maren probed and moved to stand beside Icarus in the cramped hallway. They were both listening, gauging their unseen opponent before the battle had begun.

“Y-yes,” Connor affirmed, “but she shouldn’t be able to. It’s too small. Her… her limbs… they don’t move right. None of her does. Her eyes are too big. She bends… wrong.”

Neither priest asked more questions. A gesture from Icarus and Argus handed him the key to the door. When it was apparent they were not needed, both men backed to the far end of the hall unwilling to fully retreat to the perceived safety of the living room. Icarus slid the key in the lock and paused. He wrapped his rosary around his hand and raised two fingers to make the sign of the cross. 

He turned the key and the lock clicked, the door opened at the lightest press of his fingers. He crossed into the room and stopped when he was just inside. Thyme and yarrow filled the air when Maren laid a crisp line of luminous salt at the door. She kissed her rosary beads nestled against her knuckles and signed the cross before stepping over the threshold. 

The air flexed. Too warm, too weighed down by something that had no name. He was already sweating under his cassock. This part rarely bothered him anymore, they all tried the same things. One trick ponies, the lot of them. He hesitated at the door and let his eyes adjust to the abnormal dark. He spotted the faint shine of eyes in the corner. Often mistaken for a trick of the light, the eyes always glowed a little when they were occupied by a second presence. 

He walked slowly, keeping a wide berth, “Well, look at you. Why don’t you come here and let me see you?”

The laugh was preternatural, clearly not the voice of the slight woman it set up shop in, “Why don’t you come here and let me touch you, priest?”

It tracked him as he moved from the door to the opposite wall of the room. They sized each other up. Icarus kept his movement calm and deliberate. He unzipped the Dopp kit and withdrew his copy of the Pale Doctrine, placing the pouch on the windowsill. It crouched on all fours, tucking itself farther back into the corner. 

He kept its attention on him, let it ignore Maren. The other priest opened her rites kit and withdrew an old brass bowl pressed with sigils, scorched on the inside from overuse. She filled it with dried mugwort and thyme, then set it ablaze. The smoke drifted through the air and its attention snapped to her. She froze -- waiting, watching. 

“Why don’t you save us the trouble and give me your name, demon?” Icarus’s voice stayed level, almost bored. The subtly off-human face turned back to him. He could feel its annoyance building.

It laughed, low and dark, “The last priest said the same thing. Look how that turned out for him. How’s the leg, by the way?”

Maren moved cautiously. Her hand slipped into the bag of salt and she began to pour. The two priests moved in a slow arc, opposite directions. Icarus kept it on him while she worked. These things always fixated on whoever was the loudest, they could not split their attention the way a human could. 

“If you won’t give me your name,” he smirked his challenge in the dark, “then I’ll take it.”

He touched the first page of the Pale Doctrine and the paper turned incandescent, off-white and gentle. No need to jump right to the blue-tinged blood magic. Test it first, see if it was just weak Calderism and typical Church failure. He tore the page free and cast it in front of the creature. 

“Saint Lazriel the avenging angel, sword at the gate, wielder of holy fire,” Icarus watched the shifting light behind the eyes, “I call thee down into this vessel to cast your light upon this darkness.”

The page went rigid and melded into the floor. The creature stepped towards him, curious, and leaned over it. It snickered and ran a nail over the paper, tearing it at the corner.

“Wield me as your blade and avenge the Lord our Pale God’s sacred creation,” another torn page, another rigid paper. He tore and spoke, his tone deep and rising. Each one forming a slow, deliberate half-circle around the figure, “Strike this creature from untainted flesh and banish this abomination under your burning gaze back to the monstrous realm from which it comes!”

The chain slithered and clanked when it pulled tight. Margaret’s body lunged across the room for him. A roar in its throat snagged against the shackle around its neck. It stopped short of reaching him. Claws raked the air. Its face contorted. Icarus examined it. The eyes bulged, too big for the head and pupils too blown into the sclera to be natural. Its mouth split almost to the ear, teeth doubled in its jaws. Finger joints were over-long, talons instead of nails, dark with splintered wood and blood. 

He tore another page, “Reveal yourself and be unmade in the eyes of the Lord.”

Unbothered by its effort to reach him, he pressed the luminous paper to its forehead and it snarled. Body rigid, cramping, curling in on itself like a dying spider. Icarus knew better. He rolled his eyes and tore another free, layering it over the last.

“I said reveal yourself and be unmade in the eyes of the Lord!” He shouted and tore, layering, repeating, demanding. The body jerked and flailed with each new sheet over its skin. It sank and thrashed and wailed. 

The pale light flickered and failed. Gospel fluttered from its face to the bedroom floor. A low, bitter laugh filled all corners of the room. Walls bowed and tilted, “Your Pale God has no power here, Father.”

Spit sizzled at his feet. Icarus frowned and sighed, “Show yourself, whatever you are.”

“You’re not even trying,” it chuckled and eased disjointedly to its too-long feet. “At least make this interesting!”

“I didn’t need to try,” he smiled. A menacing thing stretched across his haggard face, “I needed to buy time.”

The creature faltered and stepped back, looking around in a rising panic. Just in time to see Maren completing her wide circle of salt. It rushed her and shrieked. Too late. The salt ring gleamed, illuminating the bedroom, and pulled them back into reality. She was unmoved by its violence, patient on the other side of the ring.

“Not a demon,” she tilted her head. “Why don’t you show us what you are?”

It snapped its jaws futilely at her, raking and lunging. Every effort it made to reach across the barrier blocked by a wall it could not overtake. Each strike made the magic in the salt flare. 

“You bitch!” It frothed and stalked the ring, looking for weak points. Maren never left weak points.

Icarus pulled the stole from his shoulders and rolled up his sleeves. He plucked the silver knife from its hidden place in the knotted fabric around his waist and tossed it into the air with cocky flourish. With a practiced hand, he caught it by the handle. The creature stopped moving and stared. Something behind its warped expression adjusted. It recalculated according to the mathematics written on his arms. When he raised the knife to his palm, it tried to recoil. The salt flared when its back hit the invisible wall. 

He opened the skin, so accustomed to the bite he no longer felt it. Maren drew hers across the meat of her forearm. Mirrors of each other, two priests sinking their teeth into magic they should not be able to taste. Blood splattered along the floor and began to steam. Electricity crackled across the beams, crawling down skin and settling deep into bone. He let his head fall back and sighed into the feeling, the power. It coursed through him, pumping into his veins with every beat of his rotting heart. 

Maren’s hands moved swiftly in the air. A trail of blue-white light followed the patterns she sketched. He kept her movement at the edges of his vision when he came back to the present moment. His hands flexed and he felt heat gather in his palms. Thin blue flames lapped painlessly at his fingers, eager for his command. 

He stepped over the salt. Sound muffled. 

The creature lunged. 

He sidestepped and struck his fist into its shoulder. It reared back and doubled down. He met the vicious blows with precise strikes, the fire sizzled against its exposed skin. Forearm met the space between thumb and forefinger. Flesh scorched. It withdrew screaming. The thing dropped to the ground and skittered towards the edge of the arena -- because that was what this had become. The place where the ritual of combat was performed. 

“Corrupted priest,” it hissed through gritted teeth. “Tainted. Rotten. Obscured from the eyes of your worthless God.”

He rolled out his shoulders and moved along the ring, “I sacrifice my immortal soul as an instrument of the Lord. I will be greeted in Heaven by archangels. You, on the other hand, will simply turn to dust.”

It scrambled low, gouging floorboards in its haste to strike his leg. He kicked it in the face. It tumbled onto its back and he closed the gap. When it drew up on its knees, he saw the sigil shuddering to life under Maren’s practiced coil of her hands. She cast her fingers forward as if throwing a lifeline. What was etched in the air seared into the ground under the creature. Whatever curse it uttered died on its tongue. 

The sigil writhed. Spirals lashed its wrists and held the monster on its knees. Another forced its head back and exposed its throat. Icarus loomed over the trapped thing and shouted. The timbre of his voice split into two tones layered endlessly over each other, “If you will not be unmade by the Lord, you will be unmade by me!”

He gripped its face under his palm. It screamed against the burning magic in his hands. He jerked its head back as if trying to shake something loose. One brutal thrust of his hand. Another. Then another. Something broke free from the woman’s body. 

The dark silhouette lay motionless, but time was limited. He undid the shackle at Margaret’s neck, cupping her face in his palms. She stared at him, her face very human and very frightened. Wild-eyed, her terror rose and she twisted to see what had been thrown from her. He kept her fixed on him.

“Margaret, I need you to get up and get out of here,” he murmured quickly, “and do not break the salt. Do you understand?” She nodded, but he could see in her face she was not hearing him. He released her and snapped his fingers when she began to scramble, “Do not break the salt!” 

She slowed, another nod more lucid than the first, “Y-yes. Yes.”

Her movements were shaken and careful. She hiked the hem of her nightdress and put all her focus on stepping over the line as deliberately as she could. When she was over it, she ran. Maren touched her shoulder intending to assure her, but the panicked woman was unaware of anything except leaving that room. They listened for the cries of reunion in the hall, the hurried thunder of steps down into the living room, out the front door. 

The two priests redoubled their attention to the black, wicked shape that had begun to rise. At first the shadow was unfocused, then its edges began to sharpen. Joints popped, limbs forced back into place. It was disoriented, shaking its bulbous head to clear the fog. Maren began to twist her fingers again. She wove the pastel blue light like threads on a loom, embroidering complex patterns into empty space. Icarus reached back for the hilt of his sword and drew. The moment the blue fire in his hands touched the metal, neatly etched sigils flared to life along the flat of the blade made by Maren’s own hands. 

The thing focused on him now. Its too-wide jaws hung open, thick drool making a wet repetitive plop as it coursed over jagged teeth. Oblong limbs like bone under skin the color of muddy water stretched too tight. Its oversized eyes slit like a serpent’s, yellow-green and curious. Its toothy grin went wide with pleasant surprise. 

“Faefire,” its tone was a raspy, graveled sound. “A manhuman wielding faefire! Rarity, rarity!”

The glee gave Icarus pause. He narrowed his eyes and rolled the sword in his wrist before leveling it in an offensive stance. They never commented on the way his Netherism manifested before. The newness made him uneasy. 

It was different for all Netherists, tapping into faerie magic was unpredictable. Some were necromancers, some alchemists, others sigilists like Maren, but the creature was right -- Icarus had never met another Netherist who manifested faefire. He ignored the buoyancy in the thing’s attitude and took in its stretched out shape, the malformed head. Clearly not a bánánach. 

“A bodach,” he muttered and the creature took several too-fast tottering steps towards him. 

He swung the blade in a wide arc. It swerved away. He rode the momentum into a backhanded crescent. It hit home and carved into a leathery shoulder. Blue fire trailed every swing of the blade as if its echo was delayed. Dark ichor seeped from the wound, swallowed by the faefire channeled through steel. A high-pitched squeal tore from the creature and it lashed out at his leg. Talon caught fabric and ripped into his thigh. He growled against the flare of pain and danced backwards, mindful of the perimeter. 

He shook the ichor from his sword and waited. It studied him and dropped low again, elbows and knees bent backwards. These were fast monsters, contorting themselves to pass through reality faster than a human. The shell created by the ring protected their fragile pocket in time and kept the creature from warping its movement. Icarus slashed downward and nicked its bent-in elbow, parrying the low strike of its leg to draw a wound in what would be its calf. 

“Mare,” he warned, “help would be just lovely right about now!”

“Coming,” she grumbled. Sweat formed on her brow. Fragile threads of light wove into each other and she flicked her wrist, inverting a letter older than stone, “Bodach is different.”

The bodach squealed and bounded across the circle. He ducked. It slammed into the barrier and rolled with the force of it. Icarus cut vertically, blasting power through his hands so hard each sigil pulsed cobalt. The expulsion rocked the air and sent the bodach tumbling backwards. He sprinted across the circle and stabbed down hard. It moved away barely a breath ahead of him and he caught its ribs instead. Bone exposed through torn skin, the pale slate of fae skeleton bright against the ugly dark skin. 

It rolled back towards him and curved its other arm down, talons pinched together in a spear. He turned and braced, sword angled over his shoulder to block the coming blow. Its fingers split apart. He turned the handle, edge slicing between them. The monster screamed. It pushed, splitting the web of its hand even more. It was cutting its own arm in half to get to him. The sound made his stomach flip. Wet and crackling and full of rage. A creature willing to break itself into pieces to destroy him.

“Mare!” He shouted. His heart was pounding. He tried to divide his attention to its legs, catching movement by his feet. It was pressing him back. If he moved farther, he would break the salt and it would escape.

She grunted and the floor beneath him turned to embers, her pattern branded the boards and reached for the creature’s limbs. It fought the black tendrils that snared it. Each charcoal tentacle immobilized a limb, torso, neck. The bodach was spread wide and vulnerable, ruined hand flopping uselessly. Icarus exhaled and let his shoulders drop. She doubled over against her thighs, shoulders heaving in her battle for breath.

The bodach stared at him, an eerie calm juxtaposed against its desperate thrashing a moment before. He rolled the blade in his wrist and trained the point at its heart. 

It smiled. 

He hesitated. It strained against the binding to lean forwards—he hated that uncanny smile. With a spike of effort through his shoulders, faefire flashed up the metal. He drove the point home. 

It gasped. Worse -- it started to laugh. Its appendages began to smolder, the silver-black cinders gleaming as they worked quickly up its limbs like parchment to a candle. Before it was well and truly alight, while it still had the faculty to speak, amusement danced in its eyes. 

“Daedalus sends his regards.”

Cold shot through him. Eyes wide, limbs frozen, unable to move. Icarus stared slack jawed at the burning creature’s corpse. When the blue wispy light of its Eidolon appeared, his body would not obey. 

Maren stepped in and snared it in a vial before it vanished. She tucked the glass back into the slot on her belt and watched the ash disintegrate. After a long time in the trailing silence, she looked back at him. Sword pointed uselessly to the ground, face blank, Icarus could do nothing but stare. Her brows knit, mouth curved in a worried frown—a shift in her expression so rare he could count on two hands. She moved to stand in front of him, her hand fell heavy on his shoulder. All he could manage were two words barely above a whisper.

“My father.”

Hey Rebels! Next week I'm interviewing Shirlene Obuobi about her instant USA Today best-selling paranormal romance Die for Me. She is also the author of Between Friends and Lovers and On Rotation. Plus she's a cardiologist and a big deal on social media!

What are you dying to know about her career and her craft?

Submit your questions in the comments by Sunday morning (8/23) and I might ask her during the next episode of Rebel Ever After.

You can purchase Die For Me in the Rebel Ever After affiliate bookstore here. I was gobsmacked by how good it is. Trust me on this one. (Content warning for gun violence, paranormal antics, miscarriage, emotional abuse.)

Good Morning Friends!

I sent out an email last night to everyone who has signed up for the Shadowborne tier direct from my Shadowsmutjen@gmail email account. It contained a little questionnaire about dates and times for our zoom book club meeting. Please check your spam folder incase your email thinks I am spam. There won't be enough time to read a book and get together before the end of the month, but maybe we can at least do a meet and greet at the end of the month! That way I can work out any zoom kinks before our actual book club meeting for the end of September.

Please try and reply within the week so I can get some dates and times together for us.

Also, has everyone signed up for the discord? Bindery does not make it easy for me to know who in discord is in the Shadowborne tier, but I have separate chats for us. Please also reply with your discord username. Or do you guys hate discord? lol Let me know your thoughts! I like it but don't want to be the only one haha.

Talk soon!

Jen

Sorry, I have not been as active on here as I would love to be. But you may have seen the announcement that I will have a short story collection coming fall of next year, centering on urban legends. I've been doing a lot of writing behind the scenes!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Db1-8rHOQ8g/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I can't wait to share this collection with all of you!

I've also dropped an author website that you can reach me at anytime! It will be updated with all my story collections and further works. There's also a mailing listing you can sign up for as well!

https://ashleygravesauthor.com/

Now, let's see what I've been reading and plan to read this week.

I just finished Take A Breath: An Anthology of Claustrophobic Horror. It was a great collection that explored many different types of claustrophobia.

I've also flown through The Sea Hides It's Dead by Megan Bontrager which is a horror following a group of academics who get trapped in an underwater cave. They must face their darkest sins to survive.

I've also started The Night Pool by Lauren Lee Smith and can already tell it will be a five star read. It follows three women during the Californian gold rush in the 1800s.

I plan to start the audiobook of The Calamaities by Chuck Wendig as well. This book is CHUNKY and I was unable to get to it in time as an arc. But life happens and there's only so much time in a day!