Soul of the Sentinel Read online

  Also by E.E. Holmes

  THE WORLD OF THE GATEWAY

  The Gateway Trilogy (Series 1)

  Spirit Legacy

  Spirit Prophecy

  Spirit Ascendancy

  The Gateway Trackers (Series 2)

  Whispers of the Walker

  Plague of the Shattered

  Awakening of the Seer

  Portraits of the Forsaken

  Heart of the Rebellion

  Soul of the Sentinel

  Gift of the Darkness

  Soul of the Sentinel

  The Gateway Trackers Book 6

  E.E. Holmes

  Lily Faire Publishing

  Lily Faire Publishing

  Townsend, MA

  Copyright © 2019 by E.E. Holmes

  All rights reserved

  www.lilyfairepublishing.com

  www.eeholmes.com

  ISBN 978-1-7339352-1-0 (Print edition)

  ISBN 978-1-7339352-0-3 (Digital edition)

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC

  Author photography by Cydney Scott Photography

  To any girl anywhere who turned a “no” into a “yes” with the sheer force of her spirit, I see you. This one’s for you.

  “For boys and girls who will not mind,

  Who trouble court and mischief find,

  The Tansy Hag, she lies in wait

  To leave her mark upon your gate.”

  – Durupinen Children’s Tale

  Contents

  Also by E.E. Holmes

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. The Girl in the Flowers

  2. A New Ally

  3. Senses

  4. Jitters

  5. For Your Consideration

  6. Overruled

  7. Fallout

  8. In the Threads

  9. One of the Lads

  10. The Glimpse

  11. Trust

  12. Vigil

  13. A Return Trip

  14. Ambush

  15. Traitor Betrayed

  16. A Warning

  17. The Tansy Hag

  18. Portrait

  19. The Sentinel

  20. The Second Door

  About the Author

  Prologue

  THE MOMENT HAD COME.

  She had read all the signs, interpreted every sprawling pattern, and every tiny detail. She could be left in no more doubt. It had to be tonight.

  She sent up a silent prayer—it seemed the prudent thing to do, in case anyone was actually listening—and set to work. She had never performed this Casting before. No one had ever performed this Casting before. She had, after all, just invented it. She clenched and unclenched her shaking hands. Every Casting had once been performed for the first time, she reasoned. Every Casting was once nothing more than a whispered prayer and a leap of faith.

  And she had to leap. She had no choice.

  She had extinguished all the candles and drawn the curtains on the tower windows. The fire was burning brightly now, but there was nothing to be done about that—it was essential to the Casting. She would just have to hope that no one spotted it before she could extinguish it.

  The full moon was so big and so bright, that she could see the swollen, glowing shape of it through the curtains, anointing her secret work with its light.

  The herbs had been drying in bunches by the hearth for weeks. No one had asked about the widow’s weed or the feverfew, because they could be used in many Castings. But she had had to be cautious in concealing the rue and the mandrake and the foxglove, tying them into much smaller bunches and hanging them behind larger, more fragrant herbs to mask their scent. Naught but mischief dwelt in the purple bells of the foxglove, all Durupinen knew that.

  Well, she thought to herself, this was mischief of a sort, wasn’t it?

  She worked quickly and silently, stripping and crushing the leaves and flowers, grinding them into a fine powder with her mortar and pestle, just as the old Traveler woman had shown her. She measured and remeasured, knowing that she could not afford to make a single mistake. She would get only one chance—one chance to set this in motion.

  She carefully tipped the crushed herbs into a bowl and set it on the hearthstones in front of the leaping fire. Then she pushed back the sleeve of her nightdress to reveal the bandaged length of her forearm. She untied the end of the bandage near the crook of her elbow and unwound it carefully, revealing, inch by inch, an elaborate design of runes and florals that had been painted onto her skin. She breathed a sigh of relief to see that the old Traveler woman had been right—the paint had not smudged or faded, even after three days of being bandaged so.

  This artwork had been, perhaps, the most difficult part of her plan to conceal. She had neither the skill nor the knowledge required to paint the intricate artwork herself, but the Casting would not work without it. After much argument and discussion, they had decided that the Traveler woman would apply the paint for her, and that they would obscure it beneath bandages until it was time to perform the Casting. If anyone asked about it, she could say that she had cut or burned herself. Fortunately, the sleeves of her gowns and ceremonial robes had kept the bandages well-concealed, and not a soul, living or dead, had uttered a single word about them.

  The light of the fire glinted off the swirling patterns, and the woman allowed herself a moment to admire the intricacy of the artwork before focusing her mind once again on the task at hand. Very carefully, she used a metal spoon to scoop a small pile of glowing embers from the heart of the fire. She could feel the heat singeing the tiny fair hairs on her arm, but she did not care. It made her feel alive—connected to her body. She needed that connection to be as strong as it had ever been, if this Casting was to work. And it had to work.

  Taking a moment to steady her hand, which seemed hellbent on trembling, she held the embers beneath the bowl of herbs. Sweet, cloying tendrils of smoke began to rise from it, and she leaned forward, inhaling deeply. Almost at once the inside of her head felt as light and sinuous as the smoke, and as free to roam.

  Create the door, she told herself. Create the door and she will find me—across time, across space, across the wide and mysterious expanses of the spirit world. And then this greatest of all wrongs will be righted at last, before it is too late.

  “Create the door,” she whispered, before falling at last into the depths of the Rifting.

  1

  The Girl in the Flowers

  “SMILE.”

  “I am smiling.”

  “Sweetness, I hate to have to break this to you, but you clearly missed that day in ‘How to be a Human’ training because no one else in the world has ever made that expression and called it a smile.”

  “Would you just hurry up and take the damn picture already? My face hurts.”

  The sun beat down on my head and my armpit itched. I felt a single droplet of sweat slithering down the back of my neck and longed to wipe it away. The lace dress into which I had been stuffed was corset-tight, and I was ravenous. My stomach began loudly protesting my continued torture, but I ignored it. The truth was that I had signed up for this cruel and unusual punishment, because when your Spirit Guide is also a world-class fashion designer, you resign yourself to making certain sacrifices.

  “This is beautiful,” my sister Hannah said, clicking her camera and then gazing happily around the Fairhaven gardens and breathing a sigh of contentment. “I can’t believe we never thought to take your photos out here before.”

  “Right, okay, one last pose, just t
oss your hair back and close your eyes, like you’re imagining something,” Milo said, cocking his head to one side and eyeing me critically.

  I obeyed his order, casting my face up toward the sun and closing my eyes. “I am imagining setting this dress on fire and dancing around the flames in my sweatpants,” I said dreamily.

  “See, that’s a smile,” Milo said, clapping his hands together. “Okay, you’re done. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said grudgingly, raising myself carefully from the flowerbed in which I had been lounging and trying not to trod on the hem. “When are you planning to post these?”

  “As soon as Alice finishes up with the alterations on the last order,” Milo said, his eyes shining. “So, Saturday, hopefully? And I had a request to have a design lent out to a runway show in London next month, so I want to get that shipped out first.”

  My face broke into a real smile this time. Since Hannah and I had created a fashion blog for Milo as a Christmas gift, his longtime goal to become a famous fashion designer had transformed from unattainable dream to a very tangible possibility. At this point, our biggest challenge was stopping him from becoming too famous. After all, ghosts may have been a daily reality in the Durupinen world, but I didn’t think the Hollywood red carpet scene was quite ready for it.

  Hannah looked down at her watch and frowned. “Do you think you’ve got what you need, Milo? I’m sorry, but I have to get back to the library. Karen is meeting me with more research materials, and I still have several pages of revisions to make.”

  “Yeah, this should be fine,” Milo said, floating up behind Hannah so that he could watch the camera’s tiny screen as she clicked back through the photos. “We can head in. It looks like some of those clouds heading in are full of rain anyway.”

  We trudged back up to the castle, and as much as I’d grumbled and complained about being forced into haute couture so early in the morning, I found myself wishing we could linger in the garden a little longer. Returning to the castle meant returning to some aspects of reality I wished I could forget. I had a newfound understanding for people who liked to lose themselves in the simple beauty of a fashion magazine—if I could have spent a little more time as that carefree, airbrushed girl in the lovely dress, soaking up the sun like a flower, and a little less time as myself, I wouldn’t have complained. Being myself at the moment was… well, complicated.

  It had only been a few weeks since the attempted coup at Skye Príosún, where our own Caomhnóir guardians had nearly been suborned into service of the Necromancers. And though we had managed to thwart the attempt, the fallout had been severe, and we were still trying to assess the damage. The tense relations between the Durupinen and the Caomhnóir which had proved to be an exploitable weakness, were more strained than ever. The Trackers were scrambling to sort through the aftermath, to determine the traitors and the victims, and to track down those who had escaped, including Charlie Wright and my former Caomhnóir Ambrose, who had taken over in Finn’s absence and then betrayed us all by joining with the Necromancers voluntarily. And on top of all of that, Fiona’s injuries from our escape had left her nearly blind, and Hannah was only a few days away from presenting a policy proposal to the Council that would completely overhaul how Caomhnóir and Durupinen were permitted to interact. If the proposal failed, Finn and I would find ourselves once again in limbo, our relationship elicit and our future in the Durupinen world uncertain.

  So, in conclusion, yes, could I just go lay in the flowers and be pretty some more, please?

  Everyone stared at me as we entered the castle—unsurprising, seeing as I looked like I was headed to the prom at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Luckily, I was so used to being the subject of curious stares in this castle that I hardly registered them as I crossed the dining room to grab a cup of coffee and a croissant from the breakfast buffet.

  “Jess, I think you need to wear your shoes in here,” Hannah whispered as we passed yet another table of judgmental glares.

  “The first person to tell me to put these shoes back on gets them duct taped to their feet for the rest of the day,” I said with my mouth full of pastry.

  “They’re staring because they wish they looked this fierce!” Milo sang, not troubling to keep his voice down. Several Apprentices at a nearby table quickly dropped their blushing faces to their plates. I snorted. Well, we might still be spectacles around this castle, but at least we owned it now.

  Hannah looked at her watch again and groaned. “You guys, I really need to go meet Karen. I’m sorry. Can you take the camera back up to the room?”

  “Um, sure,” I told her, cramming the rest of the croissant into my mouth, tucking my shoes under my arm, and holding out my coffee-free hand to take the camera from her. “Don’t worry about it; go. I’ll see you there later, after I meet with Catriona.”

  Hannah gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Oh, that’s right! Good luck!”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “I’m going to need it.”

  Milo and I rounded the corner at the top of the entrance hall staircase and nearly walked right into Finn.

  “Gah!” I cried, fumbling everything I was holding in an effort not to fall over. Milo let out a shriek that echoed into the rafters over the fate of his latest sartorial creation, but thankfully I managed to slop my coffee down onto the rug rather than the dress.

  “Jess! I was just looking for… I… bloody hell!” Finn breathed, really taking me in for the first time. “That is… my God, you look positively stunning!”

  I felt the color creep up my cheeks and the beginnings of a goofy smile on my lips, which I quickly smothered. “Thanks. It’s Milo’s fault. We had a photo shoot for his next blog post this morning, and I was the sacrificial lamb this time around.”

  Finn turned to Milo and inclined his head. “She’s a vision. Well done, you.”

  Milo tossed his head. “I know, you can say it. I’m an undiscovered genius.”

  “I think we can all agree you’re a pretty well-discovered genius at this point,” I told him, before turning back to Finn and bestowing a quick kiss on him. “I don’t suppose you could do me a favor and carry this, could you? Hannah abandoned us for the library, and Milo is completely useless in these types of corporeal situations.”

  Finn chuckled. “Of course,” and held out his hands for the camera.

  “Why were you looking for me?” I asked as we made our way down the corridor that led to my room and the sweet, sweet release of normal clothes.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’ve finished all the measurements in Fiona’s studio,” Finn said. He pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and waved it at me. “And I think I’ve calculated what we’ll need for supplies, but I’ll want you to look at the sketch before I go ahead and order everything.”

  “Perfect. I’ll have a look as soon as I get changed. Thank you so much for helping me with this,” I said.

  “You are most welcome, love, although… do you think you might be biting off more than you can chew?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. We had reached the door to my room, and I dropped my shoes to the floor as I fumbled with the key in the lock.

  “Well, I must admit, I’ve never been inside Fiona’s tower before and it’s… well…”

  “Disorganized?” I suggested.

  “A bloody disaster, actually,” Finn said, shaking his head. “I know she’s eccentric, but that was a nightmare! I can’t understand how you’re going to get it all done in just a week.”

  “Well, I’ve got to try,” I said and then, when I was sure I had my voice under control I added, “She would do it for me.”

  Finn smiled at me. “Yes. Yes, she would.” He planted a kiss on my forehead and handed me the little notebook. “Have a look at that and let me know what you think. I’m due down at the barracks, but I’ll see you this afternoon. And don’t let Catriona bully you!”

  I laughed with slightly more bravado than I felt. “Don’t worry
about Catriona,” I said. “I can handle her.”

  §

  The Tracker office had never been so busy. In fact, the Tracker office was now the Tracker offices, two additional classrooms nearby having been taken over to accommodate all the additional staffing and workload that the recent uprising at Skye Príosún had necessitated. Not only had nearly every Northern Clan Tracker been pulled off their regular caseloads in order to help with the investigation, but Clans from other parts of the world had actually loaned out some of their own Trackers to aid in the process, which Durupinen everywhere could agree was of utmost importance.

  I had never met a Tracker—or indeed any Durupinen—who wasn’t descended from the Northern Clans. Well, unless you counted the Travelers, but they prided themselves thoroughly on being disconnected from any country at all. Walking into the Tracker office now was like walking into the UN or something—at any given moment, there were four or five different languages being spoken as the Durupinen tried to come together in the service of a single, unified task: wiping the remaining Necromancers from the face of the earth. Given the importance and intensity of the work being done, I was sincerely dreading telling Catriona what I had come there to say.

  “Is that your report? Let’s have it, then,” Catriona said by way of a greeting. She held a hand out and snapped her fingers impatiently at me as I extracted the papers from a folder. She flipped through them, her eyes rapidly scanning the pages for glaring omissions. “Right. That looks in order. If you can hang tight for a minute, Elin should be here in a tick. She’s got some things for you to sign.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “But I need to talk to you about something.”

  Catriona had already pulled a highlighter from thin air and was busily marking-up my report. “Talk, then. Who’s stopping you?”

  I took a deep breath, steeling myself. “I need to ask for some time away from the Trackers.”