by Luke Metcalf
“No. Her father opposed the match. We had plans to marry… but we never got the chance.”
Emily swallowed and looked down at her soup. Mitchell glanced at her and then stared off into space again, lost in memories. There was an awkward silence.
“You know, um… my birthday is on Halloween.” Emily felt pathetic trying to get his attention and she blushed.
“That’s nice,” he said but only seemed to be half listening.
“And, um,” she muttered. “It was a full moon this Halloween when I met you. Maybe we were meant to meet.”
“Hmm?” said Mitchell, snapping out of his trance. “Now show me that magical chest.”
Emily put down her spoon and took the chest from around her neck. She placed it on the ground. “Almeron sidella.”
The chest grew to its full size and she opened it. She was wearing her Ring of Teleportation but the sphere, wand, spell book and skull were all still in the chest.
“Amazing,” said Mitchell, leaning forward. “This is a real spell book?”
“Yes, Mercurios is using it to teach me spell-casting.”
“That’s amazing, Emily,” Mitchell looked at her and smiled. Emily’s heart soared once more beneath his approval. Whoever this Marigold was, she could bet that she wasn’t a wizard. She felt a surge of pride and hoped that Mitchell found it exciting and attractive that she was studying magic.
“Yes, it’s so exciting,” she gushed. “Learning magic is so much fun. Although I’ve only learned two spells I can imagine what it will be like when I can cast the advanced ones.”
“And this,” he said, pointing to the Skull of Monster Summoning. “How does it work?”
“Simple, you just draw a circle on the ground where you want the monster to appear and then stand back, hold up the skull, look in its eyes and say the command words. Then, when it’s activated, you say the name of whatever being you want to summon.”
“The same words you said to make the chest enlarge?”
“No the command words for the skull are Gorhel velsten.”
Lightning flashed and thunder exploded outside. Mitchell seized the skull, leaped to his feet and charged out of the dining room, back into the main room with the fireplace.
“Mitchell!” cried Emily, jumping to her feet. “What are you doing?”
Twenty-Four
Emily shrunk the chest, snatched it up and started to run after Mitchell. After a few stumbling steps she stopped to throw off her shoes. Mercurios was in the other room, standing on the couch.
“What’s going on? Why does he have the skull?” he shouted, dancing about frantically.
“Mitchell!” she yelled. “That thing is really dangerous! Stop!”
She came into the great hall in time to see Mitchell enter the chapel and slam the door behind him. She grabbed the handle and tried to open it but it was locked.
“Mercurios, unlock it.”
The imp grabbed the doorknob and stuck one of his claws into the lock. He fiddled with it, squishing up his face with concentration. After a moment the door swung open. Emily rushed through and stopped dead in her tracks. The ceiling soared high above and huge, intricate stained-glass windows covered the walls, depicting exquisitely rendered scenes from the bible. Hundreds of thick white beeswax candles illuminated the building, reflecting in the polished oak of the pews. At the far end was a white marble altar, surrounded by hundreds of red roses. Mitchell was in front of the altar. He had slashed his wrist open with a dagger and was finishing drawing a circle on the white marble with his blood. She could see articles of clothing and jewelry lying on the surface.
“Oh my god,” Emily whispered. “It’s a shrine for his dead girlfriend.”
Mitchell held up the skull and stared into its eyes. “Gorhel velsten!” he said.
“Mitchell, no!” she screamed.
There was a sound like a giant generator igniting. The rubies in the skull’s eyes glowed, releasing a shockwave that knocked Emily off her feet and sent Mercurios cartwheeling through the air. Emily pulled herself back onto her feet and rushed forward.
“Marigold Bonneville,” said Mitchell.
Another shockwave was released and Emily was on the ground again, screaming and writhing in pain, momentarily engulfed in crackling red energy.
“Get your hands away from the Skull of Monster Summoning, you damn vampire!” shrieked Mercurios, beside himself with rage, standing on a pew shaking his tiny fist in the air.
The crackling red energy disappeared and Emily crawled to her feet. “Oh my god,” she moaned in a daze. “He’s using the skull to bring his ex-girlfriend back from the dead!”
“Use your wand, Emily!” shrieked the imp. “Blast him unmerciful!”
Mitchell put down the skull and stood staring at the circle of blood on the altar. His eyes were blazing, his face contorted in a frenzy.
“Where is she?” he roared, then spun around and strode toward Emily. “Why isn’t it working?” he bellowed and Emily shrank back in fear. He was crazed and out of control. Mitchell glanced at Mercurios and snatched him up in his fist. “Why isn’t it working?”
“P-please calm down,” whined Mercurios as he squirmed to get free. “Put me down!”
Mitchell dropped the imp, stumbled back to the altar and collapsed on it with his head in his hands. Emily rushed over to him and put her hands on his back. “Mitchell…”
“If you are trying to summon the ghost of this Marigold,” said Mercurios. “It likely won’t work. She’s been dead far too long, her spirit is in another dimension by now and it is a tricky thing indeed to summon beings from other dimensions. The skull works best summoning monsters that are in the same world it is located in.”
“Not her ghost,” Mitchell moaned, his eyes were tortured, haunted. “Not her ghost. She is in Hell, or the Abyss. She is a demon.”
“Gorhel velsten,” said Emily, picking up the skull. The eyes stopped glowing and the hum of power fell silent.
“A demon?” said Mercurios. “The skull could have summoned it, yes indeed. However, demons are difficult, they are from another dimension, anything from another plane will only come for a brief time, if at all, before they are pulled back to their own dimension.”
“What do you mean she’s a demon?” asked Emily, horrified.
“When my mortal self died” – Mitchell struggled to get the words out – “she sold her soul to bring me back from the dead.” A bitter, pained look glazed over his eyes. “Now that I know the Abyss and the nine planes of Hell actually exist I must go to her. If I can’t bring her back here I must go to her.”
Emily felt as though a knife had been thrust through her heart. “What?” she whispered.
“I will go into the Well and hunt for her through all the demons and devils in all the planes of Hell and the Abyss if I must,” he snarled.
Emily stared at him in horror.
“Perhaps Baelaar is right,” he continued. “What is in this world but grief and woe?” His eyes became distant as he stared into space. “The world is like some evil wizard that inverts all he touches, turning dreams to nightmares. We are all ensnared in its diabolical spell as it works its reverse alchemy, turning life and love to dust and despair.”
“No, no, no!” Emily murmured. “Are you telling me that you’ve been given all these powers and immortality and all you want to do with it is destroy yourself? Or be trapped in the Abyss or the Planes of Hell?”
“You obviously understand nothing of what I have told you,” he snapped, standing up to leave.
Emily was furious and blocked his path. “I don’t understand? I don’t understand? In all these hundreds of years, did you ever stop to think of all the amazing experiences you could have been having? All the incredible things you could have achieved for this world?”
Mitchell all but spat at her words. “I will not abandon her! We are one. To lose her is to lose myself. Ah!” He waved her away. “You could never imagine such loyalty.”
His face darkened, his eyes were haunted. “I dream of her, out there, lost and alone, or worse…” His eyes focused again and he looked at Emily. “She is everything to me. We are one; we are each other… as one, forever. That is true immortality. I could never leave her in the outer darkness alone! Without the best of me who am I? I am a non-entity, an apparition, a voice on the wind from another age, a figment of a dream, a shadow in the night, gazing across a chasm at the world of the living, at its warmth and humanity.”
Fierce jealousy surged through Emily and she immediately felt a twinge of shame at feeling such animosity for a girl who had done nothing to her, who had lived and died over four hundred years before her, but there it was.
“You believe that, but what if there is no Hell? Or no afterlife? You believe there is but Mercurios has never been there, he doesn’t know for sure. Or what if there is and she’s not there? Then you’ll be throwing everything away for nothing!”
“I do not claim to know what lies beyond this world, but I cannot take the risk that her soul is out there somewhere, alone in torment. She and I are one! Can you not understand that?” Mitchell’s eyes blazed. “This vampire body seems immortal, but it is nothing. I have touched true immortality through her. Our souls are one. We will always find each other, beyond life and death… beyond everything!” he shouted, then regained his composure and stared at Emily, his eyes smoldering. “I feed upon hot blood each night, but I have been starved for nearly five hundred years. My past and my future are a crimson tempest. But I will never grow from this devil’s rain. I could drink oceans of blood and find no nourishment. The only nourishment that can bring life into me is in Marigold’s eyes, in her hair, her laughter, in her heart, her body, her joy, her pleasure, her safety, her health, the love in her eyes and the sugar touch of her lips. I have been banished from my home; it is gilded banishment, but still banishment.
“I am in exile from my native land, for my true home is wherever Marigold is. For nearly five hundred years, the chessboard of kingdoms has shifted around me and I remain a rock in the middle of this stormy sea. Only my love can bring life back to me, for there is witchcraft in her eyes, in her lips. She cast her spell on me the first moment I saw her. This world does not exist to me. All I have are my memories. I live in a world of ghosts. It is a world of phantoms that are born and live and die like shadows in the night. She is the only thing that is real. Ah.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You can never understand.”
Mitchell’s face softened. He stepped closer, gazing deep into Emily’s eyes as he gently took her by the waist. He inhaled the scent of her hair, savoring it as he spoke into her ear, their bodies barely touching, sending delicious thrills of pleasure and excitement deep inside her.
“I want you to know that meeting you has been the only light in my existence of over four hundred years of darkness. With you, for the first time in over four hundred years I felt alive again. I am deeply grateful for that and I will hold it in my heart and cherish it for all time.”
Emily’s heart surged. She pressed her body against his.
“I will never forget you,” he said, his voice low and sensual in her ear. The words he spoke, the proximity of his body, aroused a need and desire in Emily unlike anything she had ever imagined. It was as though a power had taken complete control of her mind and body and the only thing that existed was him and the all-consuming need to be with him drove her wild. Her love and longing for him was like a physical sickness, mixed with elation. She loved the way he looked at her sideways and curled his lip into a smile, she loved his voice, his pale skin and bright eyes, the sweet smell of his body, his golden, slightly mussed hair, she loved the way he looked at her when she spoke. She thought he was so loyal and perfect that she didn’t deserve him. But she had to have him. The thought of losing him made her feel like she was going to go mad. She wanted to scream with frustration. Her mind reeled with all he had told her and she needed to calm down and think clearly, to make some sort of plan.
Her heart was exploding with the words he had just spoken. She barely dared to consider it, but it sounded like he was falling in love with her, and if it wasn’t for Marigold… Bitter jealousy of the dead Marigold surged once again within her.
I wish he had never met her! she thought fiercely. She hated Marigold. She absolutely despised her. Emily tortured herself by imagining how beautiful she must have been, but even worse, she tortured herself by imagining all the little things they must have shared, the things that were theirs and theirs alone, their little inside jokes, the shared moments of fun and laughter and passion and tenderness, the love letters they wrote to one another, their touches, caresses, their kisses. Emily wanted to scream. No, no, calm down, it’s okay that he’s still obsessed with his ex who’s been dead for four hundred years. No, it wasn’t okay. She wanted to dig up Marigold’s bones and set them on fire. She wished she could somehow learn a spell that would make him forget that she ever existed. She was determined to find a way, any way, to dissuade Mitchell from completing his dark mission of self-destruction. Then she noticed something on the altar. Mitchell had indeed turned the chapel into a shrine for his dead love. On the altar were some ancient pieces of women’s clothing and jewelry and among them was the beautiful pearl necklace with the ruby and diamond pendant Emily recognized from her recurring dream. Her heart stopped.
“My dream,” she murmured and stepped away from Mitchell.
“What?” he demanded.
She pointed to the necklace. “I’ve been having this recurring dream and that necklace was in it.”
“What dream?”
There was a wailing cry from another part of the castle. “Shh,” ordered Mitchell. “The princess is awake!”
All the stained-glass windows in the chapel shattered simultaneously. Emily shrieked as through them leaped dozens of hideously disfigured people.
“Zombies!” screamed Mercurios. “Ghouls! The skull has summoned them from the graveyard.”
Emily snatched the necklace from the altar and held up her wand. Mitchell drew his sword and it burst into flame. Dozens of zombies and ghouls in various stages of putrefaction came charging at them.
“Run!” shouted Mitchell.
As they ran for the doors he hacked through the undead beings that rushed at them with deranged moans and shrieks.
“Vaza bel thlemin!” shouted Emily and a massive bolt of electricity leaped from her wand, blasting four ghouls out of their way.
They charged through the doors and Mitchell slammed and locked them. They ran through the great hall as more zombies came crashing through the windows of other parts of the castle. Mitchell hacked through more of them and Emily unleashed another blast from her wand, sending two zombies hurtling back out of the window they had come through. Mitchell tore open a set of double doors and pushed her inside.
“They won’t be able to get in here, lock the door and stay in the dungeon until I get back,” he ordered and slammed the door before she could reply.
Emily locked the door. Everything was pitch black so she pulled out her Sphere of Protection and cast an illumination spell on it. In the bluish-silver light she could see an ancient stone stairwell descending in front of her. Slowly she walked down the stairs. Mercurios sat on her shoulder muttering, “This is not good, not good indeed.”
Emily reached the bottom of the stairs. She stood in the middle of an enormous stone storage room, panting for breath. Everywhere about her were hundreds of boxes and old pieces of dusty furniture piled about. She could hear the sound of thunder crashing and rolling above as the storm reached a higher pitch. Her heart pounded in her chest. Outside, the bursts of lightning lit up the whole landscape and were as dazzling and beautiful as they were terrifying in their destructive power.
“Mercurios,” she said, holding up the pearl-and-ruby necklace
. “This is from my dream.”
“What?”
“That recurring dream, the dream I’ve been telling you about. I was in the room of a castle lying in bed and Mitchell was standing in front of me and I was wearing this necklace. It’s Marigold’s.”
“What are you saying?”
“I-I don’t know.” Emily’s heart was racing and her breathing was fast and shallow. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a large, full-length, dusty, antique mirror and stopped and stared. “Oh my god, what’s going on?”
Her heart beat faster, her head grew hotter; a ringing sound filled her ears, she felt oppressed, suffocated. She was on the verge of hysteria.
“Oh my god, Mercurios, it wasn’t a recurring dream…” She stared at the imp, her eyes wide in horror. “It was a memory!”
She stumbled backward with the impact of this shattering realization and put her head in her hands.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s the demon I’m possessed with and I’m having her memories! Don’t you see? It’s Marigold’s demon that I’m possessed with and she’s waking up!” She looked back at the reflection. “He said she was a demon. Am I possessed with the demon of Marigold Bonneville? Was it her all along? Trying to get back to Mitchell she traveled back to the worlds of the living into me, possessing me when I was in Magella, and then she came through the Well of Many Worlds inside me, to find him. Oh my god, and he even dressed me up and did my hair to look like her.”
A new crashing rose above the thunder as dozens of zombies pounded at the door at the top of the stairs and fought to tear it down. Thunder crashed and split the air in the night above. Emily looked at herself in the mirror and let out a blood-curdling scream of terror. “IT’S THE DEMON OF MITCHELL’S EX-GIRLFRIEND. SHE’S COME BACK FROM HELL TO KILL ME AND POSSESS MY BODY SO SHE CAN HAVE HIM AGAIN!” Lightning and thunder flashed and exploded again and again above the castle as she started hyperventilating. Her body shook uncontrollably as tears streamed from her eyes. “Who am I?” her voice quavered. She stared at her reflection for a moment then let out a piercing scream and hurled the necklace at her reflection in the mirror. As the mirror shattered Emily stumbled backward and collapsed on the ground, unconscious.