Page 5 of The Storm
“Mother?”
Heidi grabbed Renata’s hand and gripped tight. “Raise your shields,” she choked out, lifting the staff she used for walking and for fighting. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
Finally moving around her mother, Renata peered through the dense tree line along the meadow. She could see the house in the distance. For a second, everything seemed as it had before they’d left two weeks before on a trading trip.
But there was no smoke in the chimney. She could hear the milk cows lowing in pain. Goats and sheep wandered outside the pen, and not a single one of the shepherd dogs barked.
Renata lifted her shields, listening for the dozen familiar souls who shared their home.
Nothing.
“No.” Renata started forward, but her mother grabbed her and held her back. “No!”
“Hush.” Heidi slapped a hand over Renata’s mouth. “Be quiet!”
Balien and Giorgio moved through the grass, her warrior so stealthy she barely saw him. She could see his magic ripple around him. The grass barely moved as they rushed through it. Both scribes ran in complete silence. They split near the fence that surrounded the compound and disappeared from view.
Renata lowered every shield, desperate to hear anything.
A few minutes later, the low keening of herreshon’s soul moved Renata to run. Her mother was only steps behind her.
She ran straight to the house. She could hear no one and nothing but her intended mate and her father.
No, no, no.
Bursting through the kitchen door, she saw signs of struggle. Saw upturned chairs and blackened pots on the stove. She saw spatters of blood and a staff broken in half by the stove.
The first clothes she saw were the crumbled garments of Werner, the small boy who loved feeding the goats.
“No!” She knelt by the bench at the kitchen table, her fingers trailing though the remains of gold dust he’d left as his tiny soul rose to heaven. “Mother!”
Heidi had bypassed the kitchen and ran into the large living room. Renata could hear her sobbing. Clutching Werner’s small jacket, she rose and walked to the hearth.
More violence. More destruction.
More blood. More dust.
Empty clothes lay scattered around the room, some kicked askew and others lying neatly on the floor, as if their owners had simply set them out to wear in the morning. Renata wandered through the room in a daze. Her father rushed in and grabbed her mother, clutching her to his chest as they both wept. Renata had never heard her father weep like that. They were deep, gut-wrenching cries of grief and rage.
Every room had more empty clothes.
Every room had more dust. More blood. More horror.
Balien found Renata in the ritual room where the sacred fire of the library had been snuffed out. Linen robes from the two elders lay there, the scribe’s robes bunched by the door, lying scattered in smears of blood. The Irina robes were drenched with it, as if someone had cut the elder singer’s throat as she faced the fire.
“The elders,” she muttered. “The children…”
Balien stared at her, his face blank. “Everyone is gone. The whole house reeks of sandalwood.”
Sandalwood. The heady fragrance could only mean Grigori killers. Their mountain fortress had been invaded by the sons of the Fallen. Renata couldn’t even imagine them being a target. They were a library. Balien was the only warrior here. Their community was made of old men and women. Scholars and dairymen and farmers. Children.
She couldn’t fathom it. No, this was a bad dream. This was a horrible nightmare, and she’d wake up and Balien would be warm next to her in bed, and she would hear the songs from the kitchen and the children’s laughter outside. The house would smell like cinnamon again, and the scribes and singers would be cheerfully arguing among themselves in the library.
Renata closed her eyes, but she didn’t hear laughter when her legs went out from under her.
She only heard her father weeping.
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