Harley Merlin 8: Harley Merlin and the Challenge of Chaos

by Forrest, Bella

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. My eyes and my mind are entirely focused, Alton. Honestly, the pair of you ought to get your minds out of the gutter before they start collecting mulch.” He chuckled, clearly not bothered by Alton’s threats, though I was grateful for the backup. I could handle myself, but it felt nice to have someone help to defend me. Returning to his task, Davin set two of the rubies into the eye dishes that covered the sockets of the dead, creating a weird image that reminded me of the djinn. Opposite, Alton did the same. I had no idea if they were reaching the end of their preparations, but a strange tension lingered in the air that hadn’t been there before, as though something big were about to happen.

  “Do you have the ghoul bones?” Alton asked.

  I frowned. “I thought they were for the Hidden Things spell.”

  He nodded. “They are, but we need them for this, too. It’ll strengthen the power of our spell. Think of those bones like a guide, to help your mother and father back from wherever they are.”

  “What kind did you acquire?” Davin turned to me.

  “They’re the bones of the Bai Gu Jing.” I took the sleek black box out of my satchel and opened the lid. Set against an interior of red velvet, they didn’t look like much—just a pile of white bones. They definitely didn’t look human, though I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

  “Exceptional.” Davin smiled, approaching me to take the whole box.

  “Will I get them back?”

  He nodded. “They will remain intact. There’s very little in this world that can destroy the bones of a Bai Gu Jing, not even Necromancy of this magnitude. You’ll have them returned, worry not.”

  “Is that right?” I glanced at Alton for reassurance.

  “Yes, he’s telling the truth. You’ll get the bones back, to use for the Hidden Things spell.”

  “You think I’m lying?” Davin eyed me curiously.

  I shrugged. “The jury’s still out.” My hand accidentally grazed his as I reluctantly handed the box over, his eyes widening as we made contact.

  “My goodness,” he gasped.

  “What?”

  “You… I knew you were remarkable, but this? This is something else entirely.”

  I frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The power in you, Ms. Merlin. It is… intoxicating. One brush of your fair skin, and I can feel it all. Chaos is positively brimming out of you, in the best possible way. I’m surprised you aren’t glowing, given the intensity of it.”

  “I’m not radioactive. You aren’t going to grow three heads.” I quickly pulled my hands away, feeling weirdly embarrassed by what he’d felt.

  “No, my dear, you are so much more.”

  Taking the box, he returned to the caskets and set the ghoul bones on the altar in front of them. He opened the lid and placed his hands over the bones, closing his eyes. A moment later, he began to speak, only it didn’t sound like his voice at all. It was deeper and darker, as though it was coming from somewhere else entirely. The tone of it sounded Chinese.

  A few seconds later, the bones rattled, rising out of the box of their own accord. Instinctively, I grabbed the Grimoire and clasped it to my chest, in case this was some unexpected attack. Davin might have been charming as heck, but Alton didn’t trust him, which meant I couldn’t, either.

  The bones floated out past Davin’s hand and twisted in a spiral, hovering over the top of the two caskets. I couldn’t tell if it was the moonlight glancing in through the windows, or my eyes playing tricks on me, but the bones seemed to be growing and connecting.

  The limbs lengthened, and the bones disappeared as a beautiful young woman with long, flowing black hair, enshrouded in a billowing white dress, emerged. She was possibly the most stunning woman I’d ever seen, her features Chinese and striking, making her all the more ethereal. Only, she wasn’t entirely solid. She was standing right between the caskets, her body passing through them as if they weren’t even there. If I looked hard enough, I could even see the altar and back wall through her skin. Davin bowed to her, and she bowed back.

  “Bai Gu Jing, it is a pleasure,” he said.

  “Why have you called me?” she replied, her voice a raspy whisper.

  “There are two souls we need you to guide back to the land of the living, with the aid of a spell we’re about to perform,” Davin explained.

  “You are Necromancers. Why call for me?”

  “These souls are beyond the spirit world. They reside in the afterlife.”

  The apparition frowned. “The afterlife? That is beyond your reach.”

  “Which is why we need you,” Davin replied.

  “You know I do not obey the will of men. It was men who put me where I am. It was men who turned me to bone.” Her voice bristled with anger.

  “Then do it for me,” I said, rising from my hiding place.

  “And who are you?” The woman turned, sweeping through the church until she was mere inches from my face.

  “I’m Harley Merlin. It’s my mom and dad we need to bring back,” I replied, my voice shaking. The building had turned icy cold, the hairs on my arms standing on end as my teeth chattered.

  Her expression softened. “Your mother and father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Merlin… I know that name,” she purred. Join the club.

  “My family have been magicals since the Primus Anglicus.”

  She nodded. “Then you have ancient blood in your veins, as I do.”

  “Does that mean you’ll help?”

  She smiled sadly. “I cannot deny the pleas of a young maiden.”

  “Thank you, Miss… uh Bai Gu Jing. You have no idea what this means to me.” I gave an awkward bow, and she returned it.

  “I understand loss, maiden.” Her ghostly hand caressed my face, sending an icy shiver right down my spine. “It is deep in my very bones.”

  “In that case, we should get started,” Alton said, staring at the ghost. “Davin, are you ready?”

  He nodded. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “There are no assurances that I will be able to guide their souls back,” the spirit woman said, her voice echoing through the church, making it colder by the second.

  “We’ve got no assurances that this is going to work, so we’re all in the same boat,” Alton replied.

  “So grab an oar and join us.” Davin grinned mischievously. I was in awe of the dude—he was genuinely unfazed by this.

  The spirit bowed her head. “Very well. I will listen and act as I see fit.”

  “Davin?” Alton eyed him.

  He smiled. “Ready when you are.”

  Alton took two sticks of sage and lit the ends, passing one to Davin. Together, they formed smoky patterns across the bodies in the caskets, both of them humming as they worked. It wasn’t a tune I recognized, but the moonlight seemed to dim as they hummed, the church so cold I was turning blue, all my extremities going numb. I should’ve snagged a bigger coat on my way out. Slowly, they placed the sage into the bowls that sat on the corpses’ chests, the fire igniting the herbs.

  Alton and Davin raised their hands. Tendrils of purple and black light slithered around their fingers as they pressed their palms onto the shoulders of the dead. The purple light crept out of their hands and snaked over the dead bodies, sinking deep beneath the skin. Every collapsed vein lit up purple, creating a spiderweb beneath their pale flesh.

  I held my breath as they began to chant, in perfect harmony. “Otherworld animum, cuius extra scimus nostras voces ut relicto mundo ad imitandum nos. Caelum et deditionem venire ad nos. Qui nosti omnia relinquere et ad quam quondam audire solebas. Haec in corporibus sunt fructus, et adhuc vivere. Vasorum parati tenent. Pervenit ad nos intendere verbis per velamen separat mortis. Transire ab ignotis limine portae margariticae, et reditus. Opus es. Vos voluit. Convertere, quaeso.”

  They repeated it twice more. After they’d completed the third chant, the bone spirit
disappeared with a snap of bitterly cold smoke, no doubt chasing after the spirits of my mom and dad, wherever they were. Meanwhile, Alton and Davin continued, while I sat there and watched. After every phrase, the church grew darker, until a frosted sheen splintered out across the ancient sandstone, the windows fogging over with ice. The purple light that surged from their palms grew brighter, pulsating under the skin of the dead bodies, until I could barely look at it without burning my retinas.

  Davin seemed to be taking it all in stride, his voice booming and powerful as he repeated the mantra over and over.

  Alton, on the other hand, seemed to be struggling. His voice strained as he urged the words out, and sweat poured off his forehead as he fought to keep his hands on the shoulders of his corpse. Black sparks crackled and fizzed from his palms, his veins glowing purple from the edge of his shirt collar and up his neck. It reached his face, the purple light turning black as it followed the lines of his circulation, until his features were a mess of his normal skin and this sickening darkness. His lips had turned jet black, and when I looked up to his eyes, I saw that there was no white or green left. His eyeballs had turned entirely black, with two bright purple pinpricks in the center.

  “Alton, you can do this,” I shouted. The church floor had begun to rumble, the walls shuddering, and I had to yell to make myself heard. “Don’t let it defeat you! We need this to work. I need this to work. I need you to fight, like you’ve never fought before!”

  I didn’t know if he’d heard me, but his mouth turned into a grimace, the muscles in his neck popping as though he was trying his best to urge more power into the dead young woman in front of him. Yes, come on, Alton!

  They continued to chant, Alton’s voice getting stronger, matching Davin’s volume. My gaze flitted between the two men, panic rising through my chest. Whatever they were doing looked like it was killing them, decaying them from the inside out. Even Davin looked like he was starting to struggle, the black veins now creeping across his face, too. Their hands were shaking on the corpses, sweat dripping down onto the broken stone and the overgrown weeds, both of them trembling under the strain.

  One of the windows behind me shattered, making me jump. But, if Davin or Alton had heard it, they weren’t showing it. Davin’s eyes darkened to that same encompassing black, with the two pinpricks of purple light taking the place of his pupils. I’d been so preoccupied with worrying about the state my parents might come back in that I hadn’t considered what state Davin and Alton would end up in. Right now, it didn’t look good.

  As the chant built to a roaring crescendo, I dropped the Grimoire and covered my ears. The Bai Gu Jing suddenly reappeared between the caskets. There seemed to be two other figures with her, wispy and spirit-like. With a scream that shattered the rest of the windows, the White Bone Spirit slammed her hazy palms into the chests of the dead woman and the dead man and disappeared in an explosion of vivid purple light. Her bones hovered for a moment over the two caskets, before they toppled back into the box on the altar.

  Alton and Davin staggered backward, releasing their corpses. The black veins receded and left the two men stooped and panting on the altar plinth. I sprinted toward the caskets, just in time to see both bodies blink their eyes awake. A strange, shimmering haze rippled across them both, as if something were being projected onto their bodies. It was like watching a time lag, where one frame of an image was trying to keep up with the next one. I realized, with a jolt of nervous excitement, that my mom and dad’s faces were showing through those of the dead bodies, phasing in and out.

  “Did it work?” Alton rasped, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve.

  “I hope it did. Otherwise, that was a useless palaver.” Davin gave a weary laugh as he removed a silk handkerchief from his top pocket and dabbed it across his face.

  I rested my hands on the closed halves of the casket lids and waited. What if they’re mindless zombies? That was my first worry. What if they didn’t remember anything? What if their thoughts were mixed up with the bodies they’d taken over? The young woman blinked, my mom’s face appearing for a moment, blending with the features of the deceased.

  “Harley?” I’d have known that voice anywhere.

  “Mom?”

  “Harley, is that really you?” Tears sprang into her possessed eyes.

  “It’s me, Mom. It’s really me.” Tears threatened to spill out of my eyes as I looked down at her, the spiritual shift phasing back in to reveal my mom’s face.

  “Sweetheart… oh, my precious little girl,” she wept, sitting up slowly as she got used to her new body.

  In the other casket, the middle-aged man was starting to stir. As with my mom, there was a strange overlap, with my dad’s spirit phasing across the body he’d landed in. He sat up sharply, like something from an awful Frankenstein movie, only to relax as he got a feel for his new limbs. His eyes turned toward me, but they weren’t the eyes of the dead man—they were my dad’s eyes. I recalled them from the dreams I’d had, trapped inside the dreamcatcher that had let me remember him when I’d first arrived at the SDC.

  “Dad?” I said nervously.

  “Harley?” he replied. “How can it be you? How can this be possible?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Harley

  All my life, I’d waited for this moment, and now that it was here, I could barely move, let alone speak.

  “You’re so grown up.” My dad’s voice caught in his throat as he emerged from the casket. “How did you get so grown up?”

  I stood there frozen as he walked toward me in a hospital gown, his bare feet shuffling over the stone. Tears tumbled down my cheeks when he reached out and touched my face.

  “Sweetheart,” my mom whispered, as she followed him.

  Their spirits phased across the bodies they were using, giving me one final, heartbreaking chance to see them the way they’d been when they were alive. My mom was even more beautiful in the flesh, red hair flowing down her back. My red hair. The red hair she’d given me. And my dad… I couldn’t get over it. He was here, he was right here, standing in front of me, touching my face so gently that I wanted to crumple to the ground and hold onto his legs to stop him from ever leaving me again. He was exactly the way I’d remembered him in my dreams, with his curly, dark hair and sky-blue eyes. My eyes.

  “You’re here,” I gasped through wrenching sobs. “You’re actually here.”

  “My little peanut.” My dad grabbed my face in his hands and stared at me, like he couldn’t believe it either. “I’ve missed so much, haven’t I?” He sounded so sad that it was about to splinter what was left of my heart into tiny pieces.

  I nodded slowly. “So much. I’ve missed you every day. I’ve missed you both, every single day.”

  “I’m sorry I had to leave you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He pulled me into a tight hug that I never wanted to escape from. His body felt oddly warm, as though he really was alive, dispelling any creepiness I might’ve felt. “Can you ever forgive me? I tried so hard to keep you with me, but I couldn’t let her get you. I couldn’t be selfish, but I never, for a second, wanted to be away from you. I wanted to watch you grow up. I wanted to see every moment. And here you are, a young woman, and I wasn’t here to see it happen.”

  I gripped him tighter. “I forgave you a long time ago. I just wish things could’ve been different, so you could’ve both been with me.” I snuffled into his shoulder. “I saw the life we were supposed to have. I saw it, and I wanted it, and I couldn’t have it. And now you’re here, and I’m going to have to say goodbye again, and I don’t know if I have it in me.”

  I felt a hand on my back and turned to look at my mom. “You’re stronger than either of us, Harley. And it’s never going to be goodbye for us. As long as you’re still breathing, and you’re still living, and you’re still looking up at the night sky and thinking of us, we’ll always be by your side.” She smiled sadly. “We always have been.”

  I put my arm out to bring he
r into this bittersweet hug, clinging to both my parents as if I were a child again, a little girl who’d grazed her knee and thought the world was going to end. Only a kind word and a kiss on the forehead from my mom and dad could have fixed my pain then, and that hadn’t changed. In that moment, I would’ve given everything to have kept them here. But I could already sense our time coming to an end, and that made me cling ever tighter, savoring every moment of having them in my arms.

  “I love you so much,” I murmured, pulling their heads against mine. “I’ve missed you so much. I don’t want to have to go on without you.”

  “I love you, sweetheart.” My mom pressed her forehead to mine.

  “I loved you from the moment I heard you were coming into our lives. My peanut. Our peanut.” My dad pulled away slightly and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “But your mom is right, Harley. We’re not going anywhere. We might not be able to stay in this world, but we’re always here, with you. Our blood runs in your veins. Whenever you feel like it’s too hard, or you can’t go on, just know that we’re watching, and we’re proud, and we know you can do anything you set your mind to. We carry you with us, wherever we go.” He pressed his hand to his chest, covering his heart.

  “Where have you been?” I asked, wishing Alton and Davin would just disappear. I could sense their anxiety to continue, but I wasn’t ready yet. I needed longer.

  My dad frowned. “I can’t remember. There was peace and calm, and everything felt good. No aches, no pains, no heartbreak. But… I don’t know where or what that place was.”

  “It’s the same for me,” my mom replied. “I remember feeling at ease, and I remember your dad being with me, but I don’t know where that place was. I don’t remember anything after you released me from Eris Island.”

  A pained sob clenched my chest, my lungs burning as I fought to keep hold of my emotions. It was a relief to know that, wherever they’d been, they’d been together.

  “Hate to be the one to disturb such a touching display, but we’ve really got to get a move on if we’re going to complete your spell, Harley.” Davin’s voice echoed through the church, making my heart sink. He was right, but couldn’t he just wait?