The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  You must be loving this, I told Al, reaching up to help Flora down. If sunlight and peppermint turned his demonic stomach, then this must have been the sweetest potpourri.

  But Alastor was very still. Very quiet.

  “Ugh,” Nell said, covering her nose and mouth as she landed. The changelings were right behind her. Toad had to return to his usual size in order to fit through the drain, and he looked none too pleased about it.

  Nightlock crouched a few feet ahead on the walkway, his hands over his protruding ears. His eyes caught the traces of light and flared the way a cat’s would as he watched me. Pure hatred hardened his face.

  A thick bubble of sewage rose on the surface of the muck, only to pop like bubble gum as some thin creature with glowing bones swam beneath it.

  “This isn’t so bad . . .” I muttered.

  Another disgusting bubble burst to my right.

  A few steps later, so did another.

  And a few steps after that . . .

  The sludge began to gurgle, as if set to boil.

  Nell shuddered, rubbing at her arms. “It feels like someone just walked over my grave—”

  As the changelings moved off the platform and onto the walkway, they burst into small clouds of sparkling light. Their original forms. Flora gasped in alarm, reaching for them. They swarmed together like a hive, swirling in panicked pulses.

  “In the darkest night, bring to my hand undying light,” Nell whispered. Nothing happened. Her breath hitched in her throat. “It’s gone. My magic is gone!”

  The sewer sludge thrashed beside us, forcing us back against the tunnel’s wall as it lapped up over the edge of the walkway. Nightlock let out a low laugh that echoed along the stones.

  “Is there anything else you didn’t tell us?” I snarled.

  There was just enough light to see the slow smirk on Nightlock’s face as he told the truth. “Yes.”

  I lunged toward the hob, but Nell caught my arm, dragging me back. Nightlock scampered forward, ducking into a small alcove along the walkway. His laughter was delirious, mocking.

  “I told you to fear the dark! I told you to mind the sludge! Only the boy need survive!” he sang.

  “You little weasel!” I growled. “I’m going to toss you into the sludge—”

  Do it! Pull off his ears! Cut off his other horn!

  “Prosper, look,” Nell said, pointing down the tunnel. A pale figure stood there, without a stitch of clothing or, it seemed, a single hair on its body. But its shape was familiar. In fact, it was terrifyingly familiar.

  After everything I’d seen, I still gasped. “Is that . . . a human?”

  “No,” Flora said, her voice trembling. “That’s a selkie.”

  Wait. I actually knew what a selkie was. They were mythical seal creatures that shed their seal skins and became human when they walked on land. The Redding family had a crash course in the folklore when one of my great-uncles had experienced a break with reality, declared he was a selkie, and tried to live naked on a public beach in Cape Cod for a while. He was doing much better now.

  The pale figure came toward us. It swayed as if uncertain that each step of its bare foot would hold his weight. The selkie cocked its head as it watched us, rubbing its webbed hands up the length of its arm, to where small, scaly fins protruded just below the elbow. Its waxy skin was tight against wiry muscles and bones.

  The eyes, though. The eyes.

  They were perfectly round, lidless, and crimson.

  “H-hello, slimy—er, special selkie,” Flora said, forcing a cheerful voice. “My name is Flora, of the Greenleaf elf clan. Do you remember elves? Your ancestors and mine were friends. They got along wonderfully well. Should we do the same? I love new friends. What about you?”

  A drip of sewer slime landed right on top of my head, making me shudder.

  Has this fool forgotten that the elves forced the selkies out of the human realm and into this one?

  Why? I asked, taking one step back, then another, until I was up against the wall next to Nell. Nell’s hood fell back as she pressed up against me. The rotting smell grew worse the closer the creature came, stirring up one horrible suspicion after another.

  The gray-skinned, hairless humanoid smiled at Flora, flashing every one of its hundreds of knifelike teeth.

  They discovered that they enjoyed the taste of human flesh.

  I threw myself forward, snatching Flora’s cloak and yanking her back. The selkie snapped and clattered its teeth, swaying as he lurched toward us. The black water, covered with moss and garbage, rippled with violence. Bald gray heads rose out of its depths, surfacing like hollow, forgotten bones.

  “ ’Scuse you!” Flora said, wagging a finger. “That is not how you make friends!”

  Alastor’s voice leaped to my throat. “They are not here to make friends! They must have gathered here because the wardens of Skullcrush throw bodies down into the sewers when fiends expire. It is an endless supply of newly rotten meat!”

  I pulled Flora back again as the selkie took a vicious swipe. A wet hand slithered out of the water and locked around my ankle. This selkie hadn’t fully transformed—the rest of its body beneath the surface was that of an enormous seal. I kicked and spun out of its slimy grip with a grunt of effort.

  The sludge wasn’t just dark because of the dim light, or the filth. It was packed nearly solid with seals. The mass of them writhed, working themselves up into a feeding frenzy.

  There was nothing the changelings could do. They zipped in and out around us, fluttering anxiously. The selkies twisted and turned to avoid them, snapping their teeth in their direction.

  “Does anyone have a single idea of what to do?” I yelped, beating the creature with the heel of my other foot until it released me with a piercing shriek. “Literally anyone—any suggestion welcome!”

  “I don’t know anything about them,” Nell choked out. “Goody Elderflower said selkies were one of the fiends that went extinct!”

  “They are not fiends, Nellie,” Flora said patiently. “They are descended from fae, who are descended from the Ancients directly—”

  “Great history lesson, tell me again when we’re not about to die!” I cut in.

  I saw something shift out of the corner of my eye—a selkie, crawling up onto the platform, slithering on its belly toward the alcove where Nightlock was hiding. The hob had literally backed himself into a corner, squealing as the selkie snapped its teeth inches from his nose.

  Good, Alastor seethed. It’s what he deserves.

  “Prosper!” Nell’s shout was tinged with anger. I turned just as she shoved past me, throwing one of her empty bottles at the selkie. The shards embedded themselves in its eyes and back. As it howled out its misery, retreating into the depths of the sludge, Nell scooped Nightlock up into her arms.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  She whirled around, anger marring her face. “What are you doing? Were you really going to stand there and let him die?”

  The word rose in my mind like a shadow.

  Yes.

  Sudden shame burned in the pit of my stomach, but it was quickly drowned out by anger.

  You were in the right, Alastor insisted. It would have solved the matter of him revealing our presence. He is a waste of precious air.

  I shook my head, even as some part of me whispered yes, yes, yes. Nightlock was the reason Prue had come to Salem, which made him one of the reasons she’d been taken Downstairs. . . . But did he deserve to get torn apart and devoured by a murderous creature?

  “What is going on with you?” Nell said as the hob clung to her neck like a child.

  I flinched, my stomach turning with her words. “You don’t understand—”

  “I don’t know who the ‘new’ Prosper is trying to be,” she said, “but right now all I see when I look at you is the last thing I expected: a Redding.”

  Anger seared through me. I kicked one of the selkies away, cramming my heel down hard enough to h
ear the snap of a broken bone.

  Nell didn’t understand—it wasn’t her sister’s life at stake.

  “I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect my family,” I told her. “No matter the cost.”

  Inside my mind, Alastor recoiled. What . . . did you just say?

  “What?” I demanded, frustration flaring in me again. “Now you—you of all awful creatures—have a problem with me?”

  No . . . you have only . . . it’s merely that you are not the first to say such words.

  I ignored him, just like I ignored the look of anger and pity on Nell’s face. I knew what I was doing, and, more importantly, why.

  “You really want to fight about this right now?” I snapped, dodging a selkie as it slid toward me. “When we’re about to die?”

  “You are not about to die, warmblood,” came an exasperated voice from above. “Though you might yet, if you don’t do exactly as I tell you.”

  His buckled shoes appeared first, followed by his stockings and short, puffy pants. Zachariah slipped down through the darkness of the sewer like a falling star. His translucent form glowed all the brighter as he hovered just above the rush of fetid water.

  “Zachy!” Flora cried. “You survived!”

  He cocked his head to the side, giving her a hateful look. “I am already dead. Nothing can change that state of being, you lubberwort.”

  His form brightened with annoyance, singeing the darkness, until it flooded the tunnel with light.

  “Wait—” Nell called. “Keep going, Zachariah!”

  I didn’t understand what she meant until the shrieking began. As the light touched them, the selkies writhed in pain. The same one that had been trying to sink its teeth into Flora’s throat threw a waxy arm over its eyes and flung itself into the water.

  The stewing muck thrashed and lapped up onto the walkway as the selkies tried to cut through, around, and over one another to escape Zachariah’s intense glow.

  Nell set a trembling Nightlock down, and the hob collapsed onto the walkway.

  “M-mortal m-monsters,” he spluttered.

  “This monster saved your life,” Nell said, thrusting a thumb into her chest. She gave me a sharp look as she added, “And according to Goody Elderflower, hobs honor life debts.”

  Nightlock snarfed his snot back into his nose, but he didn’t dispute this.

  “You owe me,” she said, gripping his soiled suit jacket and lifting him until he was eye level with her. The changelings swirled around her, flashing to underscore her words. “And I demand payment. You’re going to guide us through this tunnel, and you’re not going to reveal our location, even if you find a work-around for my curse.”

  The hob trembled in rage but nodded.

  Nell set him down on the sludge-slick stones. “Is this sewer cursed?”

  Nightlock gave another jerky nod. “Yes. It strips magic from those who step inside it, leaving them defenseless. If you survive the journey to the prison, it releases.”

  Good. The changelings streaked down the length of the tunnel, eager to reach the end of it and return to their chosen forms.

  “Well . . . come on, then,” Zachariah said mulishly. He floated inches above the muck, making the selkies trapped there shriek as he passed over them.

  “Wait—wait,” I said, jogging to keep up with him. “What are you doing here? How did you even know how to find us?”

  “I came because we have a deal, do we not?” The ghost boy looked over his shoulder.

  Guilt stung me again, making my chest tight. I’d done what I had to, but both Nell and Flora didn’t seem to understand that. They looked at me with such a potent mix of disappointment and worry that I felt poisoned by it.

  With all the chaos that came in trying to flee Grimhold as it crumbled, I hadn’t even thought about Zachariah. About what would happen to any of the shades bound to the house.

  All I see when I look at you is the last thing I expected: a Redding.

  Nell’s words sank into my mind like teeth. They weren’t . . . they weren’t true. I was nothing like my family. I was just trying to be—

  Braver. Stronger. The kind of person they wouldn’t mock.

  “I, too, completely forgot about him,” Flora whispered loudly to Nell.

  “You know, when you whisper something, it’s usually because you want it to stay secret,” Nell said. “That’s kind of the whole point.”

  Flora’s eyes widened. “I thought it was because it was more fun to talk that way. Really?” She lowered her voice into a raspy whisper. “Are you sure? See, that’s definitely more fun.”

  “Oh, boy” was Nell’s only comment.

  “You ran away from our bargain, but in the first instance of luck I’ve had in three centuries, the destruction of the house voided my contract and freed me,” Zachariah said icily. “I will now require something I’ve yet to decide upon.”

  Of course, Alastor said as the memory dawned on him. A contract may end early if its contractor dies, or whatever location the shade is bound to is destroyed.

  “A word of warning you do not deserve: I will haunt you until I come up with a new demand, and you shall not sleep so long as it goes unfulfilled.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Nell said. “Can I ask you something? How did you know about the selkies and their aversion to light?”

  The shade never lost his sour look. “I knew because shades are made to dump the waste of their masters into the various sewer drains and the beasts always recoil at the sight of us.”

  As we made our way down the tunnel, toward the waiting changelings ahead, Zachariah’s form seemed to crackle every so often. It reminded me of our fireplace back home—how the heat and flame would begin to fade, only to burst back to full brightness as the fire fed on a new section of the wood.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled to him.

  “Many people have said that word to me,” Zachariah began. “My mother, as she and my baby brother lay dying upon their sickbeds. My father, as he indentured me to a farmer who liked to strike out with his fists. Even the farmer himself, who made a deal with a malefactor, exchanging my afterlife for a bottomless barrel of ale.”

  “That’s . . .” Rough. The word felt too trite to say aloud.

  Bune always made deals with the brutes of the realm, Alastor said in distaste. He found them easy prey.

  “I’m just trying to save my sister,” I told him, tucking my chin down against my chest. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

  Zachariah crossed his ghostly arms over his chest, staring straight ahead. No one, it seemed, wanted to look at me. Even Alastor was quiet.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” the shade said, the words echoing against the dark stones. “We do things we never thought possible when there appears to be a good enough reason for it.”

  At the end of the tunnel, Nightlock reluctantly pointed to a hatch disguised by the curve of the stones.

  “Where does it go?” I asked, finding its handle and giving it a firm yank. It took me, Flora, and Nell to get the heavy door open wide enough for us to slip through. The changelings in their incorporeal forms floated through it first, illuminating the spiral staircase waiting there for us.

  I was out of breath by the time I reached the upper landing, where another door stood ajar. I peered out through the crack, counting out fifteen heartbeats before shouldering it open—

  And coming face-to-face with an ogre.

  I leaped back, throwing my hands up to defend myself. Instead of seizing me, the ogre only slapped its hand over my mouth. It leaned down, its eyes glowing a familiar, unnatural shade of green.

  “Twoawd?”

  The ogre licked at its protruding lower fangs, nodding. Ogre Toad released me, just as the other changelings popped, shifting their forms to a variety of fiends: ogres, lycans, and ghouls.

  “Good idea,” I told them.

  “What do you see?” Nell whispered, sticking her head out. “Anything?”

  Nothing much bey
ond the gray stone walls and floors, and the lanterns burning with their dim green magic flames. Metal clanged against metal somewhere nearby, but even the voices I had heard before retreated into nothing more than a dull murmur.

  I shook my head, waving her forward.

  “Where are we?” I whispered to Alastor. “Do you recognize it?”

  I have only ever entered Skullcrush through the front door, Maggot. A guards’ corridor beneath a level of cells, I imagine.

  A moan carried down through the low ceiling. The hallway was so tight around us it made me feel like it had been dug out by some long-ago prisoner who’d managed to escape.

  Still, not even the dire and chilling conditions around us could keep my growing excitement at bay.

  We were finally here. Prue was within reach. And the human realm was only a mirror away.

  Is it? Alastor asked quietly. How simple it must be for you, knowing your realm is whole and waiting for you.

  I set my jaw. I had nothing to do with what’s happening here. It’s not my fault your kingdom is disappearing.

  I didn’t want to think about what it would mean for the Void to destroy Alastor’s realm after we escaped back home. I didn’t want to think about the thousands of fiends who were here. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we failed, and Pyra succeeded in killing Alastor and me to save everyone else Downstairs.

  I just wanted to find Prue and go home.

  “Okay, my guess is that we follow the voices,” Nell said, turning to the right. She lifted one of the lanterns off the wall, even though Zachariah was still glowing beside her.

  I shook out my shoulders, trying to ease the sensation of Al’s presence from my body. When I’d first realized he was inside me in Salem, he’d felt like nothing more than a wisp of air against my nerve endings. Now it was like being brushed across the face with the soft tail of a fox.