Sylvie Asleton and the Coven of Glass Read online

  Sylvie Asleton

  and the Coven of Glass

  Brookmoors Magi

  Book Two

  By James T. Callum

  Published by James T. Callum

  2019

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Sylvie Asleton

  and the Coven of Glass

  Brookmoors Magi

  Book Two

  First Edition. April, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by James T. Callum.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  www.callumbooks.com

  Written by James T. Callum.

  Cover by Eerily Fair Design.

  Books in the Brookmoor Magi Series

  (In Chronological Order)

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 1 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sylvie Asleton and the Shrike's Curse

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 1.5 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Pyx's Tale: A Vow Delayed

  (Newsletter Exclusive)

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 2 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sylvie Asleton and the Coven of Glass

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Copyright

  Books in the Brookmoors Magi Series

  About

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Afterword

  ABOUT

  A Curse threatening to break free. A deadly rivalry between Covens. An eldritch monster hunting students.

  Sylvie Asleton must prove herself worthy, or lose magic forever and with it all hope for survival.

  Even with the threat of expulsion and being treated like an outcast, Sylvie refuses to give up her dream of learning magic.

  After a clash with tragedy, she realizes being a Witness comes at a steep price. And anyone who allies with her is put in the treacherous crosshairs of monster and Magi alike.

  Sylvie needs to rely on her Coven and a hefty dose of luck if she’s going to catch a monster, or else there won’t be a Brookmoors to be kicked out of.

  Coven of Glass is the riveting second installment in the Brookmoors Magi series, a dark urban fantasy with a deep magic system set in a hidden world rife with supernatural creatures, fantastical vistas, and ancient structures seemingly with a mind of their own.

  Dedications

  For my wife. The only magic I need in my life.

  Prologue

  Sylvie awoke with a start. Cold gripped her like iron bands. She breathed in shallow gasps as consciousness swam to the forefront of her mind with fear following in its wake. The ground burned her with frost and she pushed herself up, brushing the black ashen dirt that burned her palms on her jeans.

  This was wrong. It made no sense. She had left the Graves behind. They were gone.

  The last thing she remembered was feeling relieved. The Dean had said the Board would see reason, they would allow her to stay. She was going to be a First Year student at Brookmoors Academy of Sorcery and Invocation.

  So why was she here, in the Graves again? Her mind lurched in a desperate attempt to piece it together, but there was a gaping darkness in her thoughts that she could not recall.

  It did nothing to still her thumping heart that beat out a staccato against her chest. She couldn’t be back here.

  Out of the darkness a voice drifted towards her. It was faint, like it had come a long distance. “Hold her down, Esra.” She recognized the clinical tone of Immau, the head Healer almost immediately.

  “Hello?” she called out, but there was no reply. Her voice fell away into the oppressive darkness of the lightless forest. She could barely see her hand in front of her face.

  “She’s burning up, Immau. Do something!” That voice. She’d recognize the Dean’s rich gravitas anywhere. Where was he?

  Sylvie twisted around, trying to find where the sourceless voices came from. She knew she wouldn’t find them. She was alone, and a fear as cold and pitiless as the Graves crept into her heart.

  She couldn’t be sure she’d ever escaped the Graves in the first place.

  Had her last stand against the Shrike been nothing more than a fevered, desperate hope of a dying mind? The acceptance, her salvation, Pyx coming to see her? Was she just another soul trapped within the Shrike?

  Shivering, Sylvie huddled in the dark and wrapped her arms about herself. No, that couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t allow it to be. There had to be a way out. She had magic, didn’t she? Everything was possible with magic. Right?

  “I am doing something, Esra,” said Immau. Her voice was barely a whisper. It echoed in the woods. “There was no sign of a Curse in any of our previous examinations. No, Esra, we didn’t ‘miss it,’ it was dormant. Repressed by something that’s now gone. I can’t detect more than an incoherent echo of its power. Whatever Warding held this monstrosity at bay, it’s gone now. Sylvie’s on her own.”

  The shapes of the towering black pillars of petrified trees swam into view. A dull glow illuminated the area and Sylvie’s greatest fear was made real.

  In the distance a hooded blue ghastly light floated towards her, weaving through the thick trunked trees. She’d never forget the fear it instilled in her. There was something primal about it, intense and irrational.

  It reminded her of how her emotions used to run rampant at the oddest times. Her black moods would take over, and she was powerless to resist the depressive spiral that routinely ruined her life.

  The Shrike drifted closer, and as it did the temperature plummeted. Sylvie’s gasping breaths came out in small white plumes. She shivered uncontrollably, rooted to the spot. Her eyes never left the lantern glow of light beneath the ragged black hood of the creature.

  She escaped death once. If it was coming for her again, what hope did she have?

  As the Shrike drew near, the forest gained an ethereal glow. The black, dead bark of the trees shimmered with frost and the promise of frigid pain. She had to get moving, the Shrike wasn’t fast. If she kept moving she could stay ahead of it. For a time, at least.

  Sylvie felt a surge of warmth rush through her veins. Whether it was adrenaline or something else, she couldn’t be sure. But she found her legs worked and she took immediate advantage of the fact and ran in the opposite direction.

  After a few dozen steps she was wheezing. The cold and the exertion were too much. She wasn’t going to make it far at the pace she was going.

  What to do?

  The ligh
t of the Shrike was farther away now, making her path more treacherous. Dark shapes loomed out of the black pitch that enveloped her. She barely managed to avoid walking headlong into a tree.

  The grip of fear had lessened, but it still had its cold talons gripping her heart. Bands of icy steel wrapped around her chest making breathing difficult. She was on the verge of a panic attack. Part of her mind still could not believe she was in the Graves again, that the Shrike was back to claim its due.

  With the Shrike a bare mote of malevolent light in the distance, the voices of Esra and Immau came back to her mid-sentence.

  “-remarkable, truly. Think about it, Esra. If she wasn’t here, at this exact moment and she was back in New York? The doctors would think she had an infection at best. Any medicine they gave her would be useless. By the time a Magi got wind of it - if they did, you know how tightly strained our resources are for this - the Curse would be too far gone.

  “By then it would have progressed to its terminal phase. We could be looking at another Roanoke, Esra, or worse an Atlantis-level cataclysm.”

  “Is her Curse truly so powerful?” The Dean’s voice shook. It was like the bedrock below her feet cracking. She couldn’t imagine the Dean afraid of anything.

  “Yes, Esra. That’s why we need to find a way to Seal it. If we don’t, we’re likely to lose a lot more than one girl to this Curse. Put her in there.”

  “Are you serious? She is not a drink to be chilled, Immau.”

  “I am well aware of her predicament, Esra. We’re putting her in a tub of ice to battle the fever. It won’t matter if we figure out a way to isolate the Curse from her if she suffers catastrophic brain damage from a severe fever. Now put her in the damn bath!”

  Sylvie braced for the sensation. She clenched her fists and screwed her eyes tight for the pain. The shocking splash of frigid water, but it never came. She was cold, but the Graves were uncannily cold as she recalled. Nothing new there.

  She couldn’t keep running. The Shrike didn’t tire, it didn’t sleep, and it sure as hell didn’t stop hunting her. Already what was a tiny dot of ethereal blue light had expanded to the size of the moon in the darkness.

  It was coming.

  “I beat you once, I’ll do it again!” she cried into the dark. Of course, it had been the Dean that had actually driven it off.

  Running would only tire her out. She’d done that before, made that mistake and learned from it. If she had any chance of pushing back the Shrike, even for a moment it would only be if she faced it.

  The growing ghastly blue light illuminated the dead forest of the Graves around her. It was different than she remembered, somehow less sinister. She was cold, but not so cold she was succumbing to initial stages of hypothermia. Then again, she wasn’t drenched from the rain. Maybe that was it.

  The Shrike rose up in all its horrendous splendor, and Sylvie met it head on. Its black skeletal ribs, like the broken teeth of a massive vertical maw reached towards her. Two pairs of black bony clawed hands groped the darkness for Sylvie. The smaller were almost vestigial and reached out from the ragged gap in its torn cloak.

  It floated towards her, its hood where a face should have been filled with a dreadful pale-blue light. The screams never came, the sound of a hundred men, women, and children meeting a grisly death. Their final moment of fear caught and played back for the newest victim.

  Fear bubbled up in Sylvie’s chest. It stole her breath away and made her knees shake with the effort of standing. She was wrong, so very wrong. She wasn’t strong enough to withstand the Shrike. The thoughts replayed in her head, tearing at the fragile bit of confidence she had.

  She knew it was the Shrike, it was in her head twisting her thoughts and blacking her emotions. Knowing it did nothing to stop the thoughts that swirled above her like vultures waiting for a feast.

  The only thing she’d ever done that repelled it was cling to hope, happiness, anything positive that could shield her from its control. Sylvie lifted her hands in a warding gesture at first and the Shrike came close enough that she could see its hollow cloak filled with impenetrable darkness.

  It smelled strangely of lemons. Odd.

  A faint glimmer of light limned her hands and the Shrike’s interminable advancement paused a moment. It was close enough to touch. All Sylvie had to do was reach out. Simple enough, right? Just touch the nightmare-made-manifest. Easy.

  That’s precisely what she did.

  With a bellowing cry, Sylvie swiped her hands out at the Shrike. She had no idea what she was doing. Her fingers grazed the surprisingly silken tattered robe and it burned away as if her fingers were glowing embers.

  It screamed then. A hideous, high-pitch sound that rent the air and chilled the marrow in Sylvie’s bones.

  She struggled to free herself from the paralysis, and not a moment too soon. Sylvie dove out of the way just as the Shrike was bearing down on her. Its char-black boney finger grazed her forearm and her mind exploded with white-hot agony.

  From her elbow to her wrist was a black, withered line that grew into a series of branching tendrils. Black veins sprouted from the wound, if you could even call it that. It didn’t look serious. No more than if she had dragged a sooty finger across her skin. The pain said otherwise. She screamed in both pain and defiance.

  The Shrike, suddenly unsure, flitted back out of reach to regard her with its cold light.

  The pain began to subside, but what followed was more worrying. She couldn’t feel her arm anymore. Her left arm hung limply from the elbow down and the pain was spreading inch by inch up her bicep.

  “The fever must be worse than we thought,” said Immau. “She’s delirious.”

  “What is she saying?”

  “I don’t know Esra! Hold her down. Whatever you do, you cannot let her get out of the bath.”

  “Where are you going?” The Dean’s voice was frayed.

  “Getting help,” said Immau. “Sylvie is fighting the Curse alone, Esra. She’s alone, and she’s losing. If we don’t get her help she’s not going to make it.”

  Sylvie collapsed to her knees the pain spreading up to her collarbone. The Shrike drifted in and out of view. It watched her, wary and yet intrigued like she was a particularly fascinating science experiment. She hated it. She wanted it dead, and Sylvie bent all that was left of her thought towards those thoughts and directed them like a salvo of missiles at the Shrike.

  It didn’t do anything. The Shrike bore down on her and reached a blackened claw towards her. She tried to swat it away, but she was suddenly weak and her arm felt like it weighed a ton. It went wide and the Shrike moved in for the kill.

  A bony hand wrapped around her throat and lifted her to her feet, cutting off her air with strength far greater than Sylvie possessed. Pain lanced through her neck. Dark spots danced in the blinding ethereal blue light of the Shrike’s hood.

  It wasn’t fair! She’d won. Her fight was over.

  Apparently the Shrike disagreed. Numbness chased the pain until her body was nothing more than dead weight. The Shrike’s grip tightened around her neck with malice. She was going to die and she couldn’t even scream out.

  Lights danced and flashed in her vision even though she knew her eyes were closed. Delirious, frantic thoughts ran through her mind like a freight train, the last nonsensical firing of synapses as her oxygen-starved brain began to shut down.

  A brief flash of happiness ignited in the dark. Her mother’s face appeared like a heat mirage and then vanished. She saw her father, and her brother’s faces again. Alive. Happy. She wanted to join them so badly, but her body wouldn’t move.

  A flash of blue light seared her mind.

  When Sylvie opened her eyes she was hurtling through the starry abyss of space towards a familiar landmass below like a falling star. She recognized Brookmoors with its distinctive rolling hills nestled in the valley between towering peaks of mountains. But it was wrong. Fouled.

  Whe
re there had once been verdant grassy knolls and rolling fields was tarry sludge. The hills were festering boils. Rubber clouds hung in the air, unmoving. The air was fetid and stagnant. As the dark inky landmass rose to meet her she saw glistening, pus-white Lovecraftian nightmares drive through the bleeding sky around her.

  The forests were frozen obelisks of hard black stone. Shadows flitted about on the oily grounds. A flash of light rippled across the ground, iridescent and beautiful. She dove towards it.

  Shimmering lights danced across her vision obscuring all else. Unimaginable pain racked her body until her very existence was pain. Voices battered against her mind like the sea.

  A soft voice drifted towards her, maddeningly familiar but she couldn’t place it. Help is coming. Hold fast, Syl.

  “We’re losing her, Immau. Tell me you’re not doing what I think.”

  “It’s the only way, Esra. Do it, Pyx.”

  Sylvie tried to scream, but she had no breath. No body. She was nothingness, and yet the pain did not abate. In the throes of agony a tender presence reached out towards her. It offered a balm for the pain. A salve for her hurts. It would stop the pain.

  Don’t listen to it, said the familiar voice. It was different than the presence but she couldn’t say how.

  She almost gave in. Sylvie’s entire life had been torture in one form or another. But everybody has their breaking point, and she was at hers. She had a life she wanted to get started. Brookmoors, magic, friendship, even love were within her grasp. If it could stop the pain, save her somehow from death she would gladly pay any price.

  It knows that, don’t you see? It’s the Shrike, Syl. It needs you to accept. You must reject it or you’ll never be free of it. Fight it, you’re stronger than you know.

  She didn’t want to. What she wanted was the pain to end. Hadn’t she suffered enough?

  From some long-ago buried and untapped wellspring of pure stubbornness she managed to push back against the darkness around her. She refused to give in to the pain. If she had to claw her way back she would.

  Warm light spilled into the void around her.