The Apsara Chronicles Boxed Set Page 16

  But not to the ground.

  Some strange force held them in the air, and they hovered there, turning slowly, facing deadly sharp points at the two women, as if controlled by some sentient mind.

  Vee realized too late what it meant.

  The wall of icy daggers flew at them so suddenly there was nothing she could do but lift her hand to hide her face, a reaction born of instinct rather than vanity. Her other hand she threw over Syama, some deep-seated need to protect the girl spurring the movement.

  Her heart-rate spiked, skin flushing with the shock of their fate.

  Syama gasped and Vee registered the sound in a distant part of her brain. One that also heard the tinkling of breaking ice as the shards hit their mark.

  Shifting, Vee sensed no pain, no injuries and she looked down at Syama expecting to see her hellhound bodyguard impaled by hundreds of ice daggers. Instead, she met Syama’s shocked gaze.

  Vee craned her neck to look over her shoulder and the sound that left her throat was halfway between a gasp and a choke.

  A halo of gold surrounded Vee and Syama, like a forcefield, shimmering and protecting the two women from the dangers of multiple deadly weapons.

  “Holy gumballs, Vee. You didn’t tell me you could do that?”

  Vee snorted. “I didn’t tell me I could do that either,” she murmured, her eyes not leaving the forcefield around her. She cleared her throat and stood carefully, watching the forcefield as well as the threatening shards that remained.

  Without removing her gaze from the threat, Vee said, “Syama. Maybe you can do your poof trick and get us out of here?”

  Out of her peripheral vision, Vee saw Syama draw closer, nod, and without a single complaint transform into her hellhound form. Vee felt her body go pliant and almost numb as Syama transported them both back into the front hall of their house.

  Vee fell to the ground, her legs turned into mush more from the shock of the forcefield than the attack of the killer ice-shards.

  “What happened?” Mac rushed at her from the kitchen. Putting his arms around her, he helped Vee to her feet. A warm trickle of blood ran down her temple and along her cheekbone. Mac glanced at it, a worried look darkening his green eyes.

  She patted his shoulder as she brushed his hand away gently. She needed to think, and being coddled wasn’t conducive to brain exercise.

  “You’re hurt.” He lifted his hand as if to wipe the blood away.

  Vee shook her head, watching as Syama transformed into her human form. The girls hadn’t escaped uninjured. Vee pointed at the hellhound, giving Mac a glare. “She needs the attention more than I do.”

  “What happened?” he asked, this time more insistent. He guided Syama to the kitchen and sat her at the counter. Then he rummaged in one of the drawers near the door; they kept first aid supplies in every room for just such an occasion.

  “We almost died. Vee saved us with some major magic.”

  “It wasn’t magic.”

  “Looked like magic to me.”

  Vee gritted her teeth. “Fine. It looked like magic, but it wasn’t. I think it was an extension of my aura reading ability.”

  Mac glanced up from cleaning a wound on Syama’s collarbone. “Sounds interesting.” There was an odd wavering to his voice that made Vee turn her attention on him, brows raised.

  “It was more than interesting. Trust me. It was epic. A forcefield of epicness.” Syama threw her hands in the air, emphasizing the epicness.

  Vee shook her head. “It wasn’t epic. It just came at the right place and the right time.”

  “Yeah. In time to save our asses.” Syama, for all her brash, hard-ass attitude, really sounded impressed.

  And Vee had to admit, she was impressed herself. She’d thrown a protective field around both her and Syama, keeping them from being sliced to smithereens by a wall of deadly icepicks.

  Mac gave Vee another glance and this time she knew she had to answer. He was getting that parental, impatient look, as if he was about to start counting to ten.

  She sighed and took a seat beside Syama, reaching for a swab to dab the cut on her forehead. “We went back in to scout out the place. Just in case we found Ma.”

  “I take it you didn’t.”

  Vee pursed her lips. “We managed to get back inside but when we tried to access the basement, we had a slight altercation with a wall of assassin icepicks.”

  “A what?” Mac’s olive skin managed to pale to a sickly gray.

  Syama, despite her injuries—two cuts to the forehead from being thrown across the floor, and one to the neck from an errant ice-dagger—went into an enthusiastically descriptive replay of their kitchen nightmare.

  “Was there anyone controlling it that you could see?” Mac was doing what he always did, encouraging discussion that would both ingrain the memory of the incident in Vee’s mind, and focus on each aspect in order to pick it apart.

  Vee shook her head. “There may well have been someone behind the wall. But neither of us could see. It was really a sheet of ice, as if a window had frosted over until completely white. I especially did not like fending off hundreds of blades of ice.”

  Mac grunted. “Probably what brought on this new . . . ability of yours.”

  “What new ability?” asked Vee’s mother as she walked into the room, her expression worried as she surveyed the two girls and their respective damages.

  She approached Vee and lifted her daughter’s hair off the cut at her temple, inspected it with a squinty eye and a scowl, then reached for a clean swab and handed it to Vee without another word.

  Vee repeated her run-in with deadly icicles episode, giving her mother a quick recap, a little confused. “Didn’t you see what happened?”

  Devi shook her head. “No. We had some issues with interference.”

  Vee paused. “I’d be interested to see the timing of the interference. I wonder if whoever conjured up the ice-daggers could have been responsible for the interference.”

  “More than likely.” Devi maintained an air of calm that Vee couldn’t understand.

  Vee supposed she ought to admire that trait of her mother’s—the ability to remain steadfast under duress, to make smart decisions under pressure.

  That thought brought back the memory of the night Vee had lost her father and she stiffened. Her mother’s expression cooled as if she’d read exactly what Vee had been thinking.

  Not surprising since they’d been playing this game for years.

  Vee cleared her throat. “So what do we have? Those images give you anything?”

  Devi nodded. “Yes, and no. We’ve been trying to trace each item. Maybe if we can identify their origins we could fathom what type of person the kidnapper is.”

  Vee shook her head. “I think that’s what he wants.”

  Devi quirked her eyebrows, and waited.

  “If you look at the collection as a whole, what does it tell us?”

  “That he’s a sadistic bastard?” offered Syama.

  Vee nodded. “Yes. And he’s sending us a message.” Vee got to her feet. “He’s saying ‘I’m powerful and I will enjoy hurting her. Just give me an excuse.’”

  Devi’s expression crumbled as she stared at Vee; she agreed with her daughter’s take on the room’s artifact collection.

  “That’s not to say that something among those artifacts isn’t important. His message could be twofold.”

  Vee had spoken the words, not wanting to negate her mother’s deductions, but Devi’s expression shifted as she digested her daughter’s words. Vee straightened and watched her mother with concern.

  Devi’s skin had lost all color, her face normally unlined and ridiculously youthful, suddenly appearing twenty years older.

  “Mom?” For Vee to use that title was enough to reveal how concerned she was with Devi’s reaction.

  Devi’s eyelids fluttered and she drew control around her like a shroud. Her face became implacably cool. “One artifact stood out.”

&
nbsp; Vee tracked her as she moved to the kitchen counter and began to gather the detritus of Mac’s attempt at first aid, busying her hands so as not to show her nervousness. At which she failed miserably, of course.

  She took a ragged breath. “I didn’t think anything of it until you mentioned the message.”

  Vee remained silent, giving her mother the opportunity to speak at her own pace. She washed her hands at the sink, then put a kettle on to boil, glancing over at Devi every so often.

  Devi paused and looked over at her, the kitchen table suddenly feeling like the span of an entire continent between them.

  “The painting, the one beside the window . . . small but detailed.”

  Vee knew the one and offered a nod. She’d found that particular artwork quite horrific, even with the stylized, almost crude drawings.

  Devi inhaled long and hard. “The painting is one of two brothers and a battle they’d waged against the worshippers of Lord Vishnu. Lord Narasimha was instrumental in ending that battle. It’s a tale that’s repeated in every age—the brothers are born, Hiranyaksha dies. Hiranyakasipu seeks an awful revenge on everyone he holds responsible.”

  “And what does that have to do with the house? For all we know it’s just an artifact like the rest of the items in the room,” Vee found herself responding despite her intention not to.

  Devi nodded. “I would have agreed with you if we—as a family—had had no relationship with the brothers.”

  The silence in the kitchen was palpable.

  “Relationship with the brothers?” Vee asked, studying Devi’s eyes, her heart racing.

  Vee’s mother remained silent.

  “Relationship with two purportedly mythical asura brothers?”

  Devi lifted an eyebrow. “There is nothing ‘purported’ about it, and you know it. The only questionable thing is they’ve been believed dead for centuries. We know differently.”

  “How?”

  Devi’s mouth fell into a firm line. “Your father found out pretty much by accident. He came across a spell that summoned Yaksha—thankfully not his brother, Kasipu. Once the way was opened for him to enter this plane, he kept returning. He found the means to grow stronger and stronger each time and your father was baffled by it. Until he realized . . .”

  Devi broke off, wringing her hands as her eyes skittered away from Vee’s gaze.

  “Realized what?”

  Devi looked up at Vee, indecision twisting her brow and coloring her honey eyes a dark brown. At last, whatever emotions warred within her came to a halt and she straightened her shoulders as if having made a decision.

  “Until we figured out that Yaksha was feeding off the power of one particular member of our family.”

  Chapter 31

  Just when she thought this whole craziness couldn’t get any more crazy.

  “One of our family?” Something told Vee that ignorance had been bliss and she was about to kiss it bye-bye.

  Thankfully, she didn’t need to nudge her mother again. “Your power is unique, Vee. When you began to show signs, we hadn’t realized how unique it was. Or how attractive it would be to the demonic presences across the dimensions.

  “Your father researched for a long time, trying to figure out the best way to prevent Yaksha—and all the other demons that were sure to come, attracted like moths to a flame—but he ended up making only one conclusion. The best way to protect you from a constant attack by demons hungry for your power was to contain that power, to throw a binding around it in order to hide it from them.”

  The kitchen was now silent, and Vee realized with a start that Mac and Syama had left, perhaps understanding the importance of their discussion. Or perhaps they knew that Vee was likely to explode at the news.

  She was betting on the latter.

  “What power?” She voiced the question, her tone hard and unwavering against the flicker of sadness in her mother’s eyes.

  Devi sighed. “Your ability to read aural remnants is only one small aspect of your power.”

  Vee blinked. “That would explain the whole forcefield thing,” she murmured, turning the revelation over and over in her mind. Then she met her mother’s gaze. “Is the binding failing?”

  Devi shrugged. “I’m not sure. I tried to remove it after your father died. I disagreed with him, my own passion for female independence said what we did was wrong, but it was only one part of the lie.”

  Vee sighed. There was more? “Why don’t you break it down for me?”

  Devi gave a slow nod. “Our family is . . . different.” She pointed at her chest. “You already know we are the keepers of the Apsara Scrolls, that we guard them against the world. You’ve grown up learning fighting skills that go back millennia. But more than that, we are, through the maternal line, direct descendants of Tilottama and the sage Narada.”

  “The Apsara?” The cogs turned in Vee’s brain as things began to slowly fall into place.

  Devi nodded.

  Vee could only recall that Narada had caused much mischief where the Apsara Tilottama was concerned. Legend had it that Narada had whispered into Parvathi’s ear when Lord Shiva was entranced by the Apsara’s beauty. So, his actions had in fact been due to jealousy. Interesting.

  “An Apsara married to a sage?” Vee murmured.

  Another nod.

  “What does that mean for us?”

  “It means that great power travels through our bloodline. The genes are so strong that very little of our DNA structure is comprised of the male contribution.”

  Of course, she’d studied it. Vee tightened her jaw, forcing herself not to make a cruel comment about everything that went on without Vee knowing.

  “It’s almost a pure replica of the originating couple.”

  “So what about these powers?”

  Devi’s mouth tightened. “What do you know about Apsaras?”

  Vee shrugged. “Heavenly warrior maidens. Consorts to kings. The religious texts paint them as courtesan types, seductresses, but in reality they belonged to an elite squad of Lord Shiva’s Army. Alternative theory is they were a secret sisterhood working as spies or assassins, and even double-agents.”

  Devi nodded and smiled. “Ma?” She didn’t seem surprised at the breadth of Vee’s education.

  Vee grinned even though she wasn’t in the mood. But it made sense now that she’d been subtly educated by her cunning grandmother.

  Vee stiffened. “Shit.” She looked up and met her mother’s eyes. “Now, he has her.”

  Devi nodded. “She’ll fight him as much as possible.”

  “Does she also have powers?”

  Devi nodded and then paused. “The manifestation of power fluctuates from generation to generation. Ma’s power is limited but she does give off a similar attractive power, not enough to endanger her life. I, myself, did not manifest enough of that power. Mine is more of a predictive ability but one which strikes without reason or control. You, on the other hand, are quite likely the one that Tilottama’s texts predicted.”

  “Texts?” Vee’s eyes widened. “The Scrolls?”

  Devi nodded. “She wrote extensively about the Apsaras and their powers and training. All the men and women through the generations have received compulsory training, husbands included.” Devi glanced at the door, and Vee understood she was thinking of Mac.

  “Mac too?”

  Devi nodded. “He was very good about it.”

  “I can’t imagine Mac engaged in hand-to-hand combat.”

  Devi smiled, her fondness for her estranged husband clear in her small smile. Then it disappeared as she turned to face Vee again. “He’ll do whatever it takes to protect you. Even offer his life for yours.”

  Vee made a face. “Don’t worry. That is so not going to happen.” Her mother’s expression remained implacable. “So whatever this binding was . . . can you reverse it?”

  Devi shook her head. “That’s the problem. Without your father, we can’t undo it. Or at least not until we can figure out
what spell he used.”

  Vee nodded. She’d heard the low note in her mother’s voice, the one that implied there was something she wasn’t saying. “What else?”

  Devi sighed. “Without his blood we may not be able to release the ward around your power.”

  Vee took a step back and rested against the counter behind her. She’d been hit with a one-two punch. First, the revelation that she was some powerful Apsara—instead of just some woman destined to protect dusty old scrolls—and then right on the back of it, the knowledge that she can’t use that power until the blood of her dead father was used to remove the binding.

  She may as well have never been told. She glared at her mother. “So what are we supposed to do about Ma? We need every advantage we can get to save her.”

  Devi bit her lip.

  “What now?” Vee pushed her harder.

  And Devi sighed, staring up at the ceiling for a moment. Then she regained control and met Vee’s eyes. “I suspect he’s looking for you. Ma is likely emitting a low-level energy, indicative of her own power. If this is Kasipu, then it’s likely he knows about you, and about his brother’s connection to your power. Which would make sense as to why he’s targeted Ma. Her power isn’t warded.”

  “Which means he will be mighty pissed off when he finds out she isn’t the one with the power.”

  “I’m sure he already knows.”

  He did. He’d demanded the killer in exchange and he’d called Ma “the old woman.” Vee’s heart thudded at the thought. “Then it’s me he wants. All the more reason to find a way to get my power returned to me. Then, at least I can defend us all. This dude sounds like he’s hellbent on destruction. And it means you are next.”

  Devi’s eyes flicked up at Vee’s face, curiosity flaring for a moment before dampening. “Me?” Although she asked the question, Vee suspected she knew what she meant.

  “Yes, Mother. He wants the killer of his brother. And you yourself said Dad didn’t kill him, so you’re next on this demon’s list.”

  Devi opened her mouth to say something, then closed it slowly.

  Vee sighed and struggled not to roll her eyes in frustration. “What now?” She was beginning to feel like she was extracting teeth from her mother. How hard was it to get information from the woman?