“Is she? So why is she the one that’s dying out there?”
“Indeed… is she?”
I… paused. Gods, I paused. A tiny fissure manifested in the concrete wall of my composure and I paused. “What?” I asked.
The Shadow grinned a wicked smile. “Tell me. How certain are you that, right now, your friend Damien isn’t dead?”
“I’m totally certain,” I said, perhaps a little quickly.
“Are you? The bead of sweat travelling down your face says otherwise.”
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe. But what about Frank? He’s still up there, somewhere. Fending for himself against a horde of hungry ghosts. How long do you think he can run before exhaustion catches up with him?”
“Are you going to tell me what you want or aren’t you?”
A drip-drop stole my attention for the barest of instants. Water? Dripping down here? I knew this house was a facsimile of Collette’s school, a very convincing one too, but did it really have running water? The pipes, crisscrossing the ceiling above my head would have had me believe that it did.
“What I want, my dear, is simple,” she said, then paused. “I want to exist.”
“But you do exist. Here.”
“Ah but it isn’t much of an existence, is it?”
“I don’t know. The underworld isn’t so bad.”
“Perhaps, but the world of the living is full of delicious souls, ripe souls, people whose inner light could help me achieve levels of power no other witch has ever reached before.”
“They aren’t yours for the taking,” I said, scoffing.
“I don’t expect you to understand. You are the red witch, but you are young. Your vision is narrow, yet. You fail to comprehend how utterly insignificant the world truly is when compared to the magnitude of the universes.”
“I don’t need to care about those things. They may as well be fiction to me. This planet is my home—”
“And if you wish to defend it, you had best beware of the things that lurk in the space between stars.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean, red witch, is that I will give you your little planet and spare your precious humans if you would only allow me… to devour the spirit of Collette.”
“I don’t—”
“I understand, it sounds incredulous that I would ask of such a thing, but you will not be without reward.”
The thing that looked remarkably like Collette approached. She licked her lips and smiled. For a moment I found myself paralyzed. The gypsy was still on the stairs, I was vaguely aware of that, and in my mind I was still trying to figure out how I could use the running water in the pipes above my head to my advantage. But when the Shadow started to advance, I lost myself.
She was close enough to kiss, now. The slightest of movements could have closed the distance between our faces and I found my body flushed at the thought. The Shadow tilted her eyes toward the floor. It was the talisman around my neck which drew her eyes. Of course, the talisman! I was supposed to use it and the urn to trap the Shadow and deliver it to Collette.
In one swift movement the Shadow clutched the necklace and yanked it off my neck. She tossed it across the room and it flew like a bullet toward the wall on the other side before shattering into a million pieces. The smell of rosemary filled the air but was snuffed out by another, more noxious smell. It was strong and pungent, like a bag of potatoes that had been left in the cupboard for too long and had rotted away to a mushy, fly ridden goop and the smell - Gods, the smell - seemed to come to me, encircle me, and meld into me.
“I will prepare you for the challenges you will face,” she said, “I will even give you Linezka; the dead thing that would wish to consume your lifesblood. All I ask for in return is that you give me Collette, and that you stand back and watch me devour this woman here.”
She turned her head toward the gypsy. My eyes widened. I could feel my heart beating hard against the pressure points in my neck and ears. I wanted to scream! Get out! But the words didn’t come. My fire didn’t come. I was paralyzed, stricken with a deathly cold that wasn’t so much cold as it was… a kind of enervating air.
“What?” the gypsy asked.
“Yes,” the Shadow said, advancing on her, now. “You have served me well, but your time is up.”
“No!” she said, “You promised me life! You were to give me a body. I was to go back home and see my brother safely across in his final hours!”
“That’ll teach you to trust a Necromancer, won’t it?”
The gypsy turned and made a run for the door at the top of the stairs, but shadowy tendrils leapt out of the darkness and yanked at her hair and arms, pulling her to the ground with a loud thud. She was sobbing now. Weeping, even.
“What do you say?” The Shadow cocked her head toward me and grinned. “Two lives in exchange for the lives you will save when you come into your power.”
Come into my power? I thought I had already come into my power. I wanted to speak, to ask, but the terrible smell surrounding me made it difficult to concentrate all of a sudden. My body was starting to go cold. I could feel the fumes seeping into my pores, getting under my skin and swimming alongside the red blood cells in my veins. It made my skin break out into goose flesh, but I fought the urge to scratch, to do anything besides remain in the moment. In the room.
“Two lives?” I asked.
The Shadow smiled. “Two lives.”
The gypsy’s eyes widened like a deer caught in headlights.
“And you will not harm another living being?”
She bowed.
I turned my gaze to the gypsy who sat on the ground, shadowy tendrils as thick as power cables wrapped around her wrists and snaked into her hair, eyes pregnant with fear, and considered. I didn’t think I would ever find myself truly considering something like this. I mean, what do you do when the devil hands you a delicious red apple? You understand that taking it is wrong so you hesitate, you hold on to your sense of duty or honor or morals.
But if he tells you to take it or he’ll kill your family, morals quickly become irrelevant.
I felt something like that happening to me in that moment. Felt the weight of the Shadow’s promise weighing down on me like the weight of the world. What if I really was unprepared? What if Collette wouldn’t be able to siphon the information I needed out of the Shadow? What if, when they joined again, they remained two separate people? Would I miss my chance? Would I regret having held on to my morals instead of doing what I should have done and accepted the thing’s offer?
I took a deep, long, drawn breath. “Fine,” I said, “I accept your terms.”
CHAPTER 25
It was a quick snap.
One move and the Shadow was on the gypsy, hands outstretched, the gypsy raised a clear foot off the ground by the tendrils extending from the dark parts of the room. I watched for a moment, stiff, heart pounding, as the Shadow coaxed the gypsy’s aura to radiate from her body without saying a word and knew that now, while her back was turned, was my chance.
It was now or never. Do or die.
I glanced at my blood-caked palms and flexed my fingers, and as I willed the Power to come flowing out of me I sensed… something else. The smell was back. That awful, rancid thing that made me feel cold and hot, repulsed and drawn. Then it was gone, just like that, and in an instant of clarity, of total understanding, I knew exactly what had happened.
The power of the talisman was mine.
I leapt at the Shadow’s back with my palms outstretched, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and grabbed her by the sides of the face. She screamed, wriggled around to face me, and flung me across the room with the power of her mind. My back slammed against the concrete with a thud and I fell, spent, to the floor, aching and hurt.
“How dare you!” the shadow said, “You said we had an agreement!”
I stared the Shadow in the eyes and narrowed my own into slits. “I lied.”
&
nbsp; Using magick to propel my body up from the ground I threw myself at the Shadow, tumbled with her, and pinned down her wrists. Shadow tendrils shot out of the darkness and groped for my extremities. One cold, thick cable of shadow wrapped around my waist and lifted me off the ground. Another went to my neck and I felt my windpipe seal shut, crushed under the power of the Shadow’s magick.
But I pistoned my hands toward her face, clasped it tight, and envisaged her essence splitting apart and being sucked into my palms. I was calling on magick I had never before used, power that came from the fifth point in the pentacle, Spirit magick. But as I worked the magick through the focus point of my own body it didn’t feel like the power was coming from somewhere else.
It was coming from me, from within.
Breathless seconds passed and I watched as the Shadow’s face began to crack. She was like a piece of glass fracturing under immense pressure, streaks of obsidian cutting through porcelain skin. At any moment she could crack. Any second! I only had to hold on. Just hold on and don’t pass out!
“No!” She wailed wildly, and the entire house above us trembled under the weight of her banshee scream.
The shadow tendril around my neck pulled tighter. I thought my neck was going to snap or that in any given moment my head would pop like a balloon! The world receded, fading, fading… fading. Then a loud smash echoed throughout the basement and the tendrils around my neck went limp. I could breathe! I sucked air in as hard as I could and coughed from the fiery pain in my throat, and as the air worked its way into my lungs the world stopped swimming and came back into focus.
The basement was lighter, now. The Shadow, who was once between my legs and on the ground, was gone. All that remained of her was a small pool of inky black water, some of which had ended up on my palms.
Then it came.
I lurched and doubled over, clutching my stomach. In the back of my mind an image began to form – that of a beast of shadow bashing against a cage, frenzied, raging, and screaming for release. I wanted to throw up. To let it out. To stop the pain. But how could I? I had managed to capture it in a moment of surprise, but it was a powerful entity – way stronger than I had anticipated and maybe even more so than me.
I wouldn’t get a second chance.
It came again, hurtling toward the cage around my soul. I lurched, choked, brought my hands to my mouth to hold back the vomit… and succeeded. The pain went and, without waiting for another charge, I rose to my feet.
The gypsy was standing in the corner of the room, now, her hands up to her face, terrified. I approached.
“No,” she said, “Please, I beg mercy. I was tricked!”
But I didn’t want to hear it. “We have to get out of here,” I said, “Collette is dying.”
The gypsy, still terrified, lowered her hands and nodded.
I rushed up the stairs, grabbed the door knob and yanked it hard. The door opened with a screech, as if attempting to resist me – to deny my egress – but it yielded and I stepped through. And as my foot touched the carpeted floor of the hall Frank pivoted around from behind the door and nearly whacked me over the head with an empty candle holder.
“Witch!” he said, “I could have killed you just now!”
“Frank!” I threw my arms around him. He was hurt, a little scratched up, but otherwise okay. “C’mon!”
Frank led the charge out of the mansion. The ghosts who had followed us earlier, and the ones who had kept Frank busy during my stint in the basement, were still around. And while they looked dazed and out of sorts, they seemed now to be confused and bewildered as opposed to mind controlled. A fact I was most thankful for.
Because if they were still around, still trying to kill us, I don’t think we would have made it to Collette before her candle burnt out. She would have died in Damien’s arms, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with the sticky, cold thing caged up inside my soul. Fuck, I still didn’t know what to do with the thing caged up inside my soul! I figured I would just make it up as I went and transfer the thing to Collette.
But time was not on our side. I hadn’t been keeping track, but it felt like we were running out of time. And remembering the way Collette looked more like a ghost than the ghosts in here did make me wonder whether she would even have the energy to perform the necessary spell.
I would have to wing it and hope for the best.
So we ran, like bats out of hell, along the path leading away from the mansion and found Damien and Collette exactly where we had left them. Relief washed over me like a rush of warm water. Damien was alive. The Shadow had lied. Of course, I knew that. In my innermost self I knew that he was okay and that the Shadow was lying.
“There they are!” Frank said.
Damien stood bolt upright. Collette was on the ground next to him, her head rested on the backpack Damien was carrying. He was waving for us to hurry. Shit. Collette. She didn’t have much time. I could see it in the urgency on Damien’s face.
We closed the gap and Damien asked for the necklace.
“I don’t have it,” I said.
“What? Where’s the shadow?” he asked.
“Inside me. Step back.”
Damien did, and I went to my knees beside the woman who lay still and dying at my feet. I brushed her hair, called her name, but she didn’t move. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking, and her skin was as cold as ice. As cold as the underworld. Cold as the dead.
“How…?” Damien asked, but Frank cut him off.
“This isn’t the time for questions, Damien,” he said.
“Hush, both of you!” I said.
I could feel the Shadow rebelling in the pit of the cage I had built for it. It knew what I was doing, knew where I was. That the Shadow was dangerously close to being thrown back into its original body wasn’t news to it, but it was powerless to stop me. Thrash as it might, my cage had grown strong in the time since its incarceration, and now its rants and raves were as distant and as painless as a whisper.
“Collette,” I said, “If you can hear me, I need you to fight. When this thing comes in, you need to fight. You need to take control.”
Collette didn’t move. Her chest slowly heaved, in and out, but the movements were weak. Any one of them, I feared, could be her last. But her breathing was holding, and that gave me hope. Hope that I still had time. Even if what I was about to do had little chance of success and even more chance of an epic disaster.
I could kill her. Severely injure her. Or, worse, the Shadow could take over her body entirely. The risk was high, but what choice did I have? Keep the Shadow locked away in my inner prison? For how long? Sooner or later it would escape. I could feel it plotting even now as I prepared myself to deliver it into Collette’s near catatonic body.
One mistake, and it would slip from my fingers like a fish.
Not wanting to hesitate for another second, I pressed my hands against Collette’s chest – on the space just above her breasts – and closed my eyes. In my mind I called up the image I had been given before, the image of the beast charging wildly at the bulwark of my soul, and unlocked the gate. The beast paused, checked the gate, and swung it open. And as the thing’s energy came rushing out like a flood I imagined it running through tunnels of light from my chest to my arms, to my wrists, to my palms, and into Collette.
Her chest heaved and her body stiffened as if my hands were defibrillators. A pulse of black energy, a shockwave, radiated from us in all directions sending Damien, Frank and Madame Aishe sprawling to the ground. My hands went cold. Ice cold. I wanted to break away, to stop the cold from turning into pain I couldn’t handle. I watched as the tips of my fingers went black, then the blackness crawled over the knuckles and consumed more than half of my palms.
Numb.
My fingers could have fallen off and I wouldn’t have known if I wasn’t looking at them. And if this was happening to me, what was happening to Collette? Her skin was hidden beneath the black dress she was wearing, but I could see sma
ll blue veins appearing on her neck and cheek. Was she dying? Was she dead?
I pulled away from her and feeling returned to my fingers. Blood, warmth, and color came rushing back. I cradled them and warmed them with my breath, happy that none of them had fallen off, but Collette wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed, now, and her skin was white. Her lips blue. She was a corpse.
“Amber,” Frank said, struggling to his feet, “Are you okay?”
Damien stood too and rushed to my side. He took my hands in his and stared at them wide eyed as the blackness receded completely, the skin returning to its natural light pink. “Is she…?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, look at her.”
My hands trembled as the fear came rushing to me like the specter of death, descending from the dark ceiling of this terrible, bleak place.
“Collette?” I asked, leaning over her again. “Please wake up.”
The veins on Collette’s face receded like little blue snakes wriggling into the safety of Collette’s neckline. A burst of color flushed to her cheeks, lips, nose and brow. She heaved one great, deep breath and opened her eyes, but I didn’t smile. Not yet. I didn’t know if this truly was Collette or if… if the Shadow had won whatever internal struggle had taken place inside her mind.
Assuming there was enough of Collette left in there for her to fight.
She turned her head to me, eyes sparkling, and blinked once. Twice. “Amber,” she said, “I’m… alive.”
I nodded. “You are.”
Collette patted herself down and then took my hands, which were still resting on her chest. “Please, help me up,” she said, and I did. We rose to our feet and I stared at her with Frank, Damien and Madame Aishe at my back. I couldn’t tell if this was the real Collette or the Shadow disguised as her, wearing her skin like a killer wears a mask.
I should have thought of a secret word or a handshake, something for Collette to identify herself with. But would it have mattered? When the reintegration happened, wouldn’t the Shadow have access to all of Collette’s memories of the time they spent apart? Assuming the Shadow had been somehow unlinked from Collette’s physical mind during their separation.