I wasn’t done yet. Far from it. I had unintentionally kicked a hole in the wall to let magic in, so it was time to let more magic in.
Stop him, I ordered my roots, and as soon as I did, I regretted it.
The spiders on my face pulsed with a new, frenzied kind of torture that spasmed through my entire body. I fell to the ground, my muscles twitching painfully, unable to control my movements. But all that mattered was that my roots were coming.
Rock sprayed across my front as they broke through the ground. Bark dragged over loose dirt in their quest to find him and bring him down.
The impossible wind inside the Core kicked up with snarling, howling force.
The Counselor’s footsteps stopped, and he exhaled on a groan. Crackles and pops ripped through the air while a fight I couldn’t see raged on, but the sound of twisting, searching roots filled my throbbing body with courage, with hope, and that was all I really needed.
To finish this, though—to get out of the Core to save the ones I loved—I needed to get rid of these zappy little black spiders. Screw the consequences, because what else could I do? Die? It was a little late to worry about that. Besides, I had already wasted so much time down here with the dueling ex-couple.
A plan started to form, one about as shaky as my uncontrollable limbs, but maybe it would work.
Bring me my wall, I told the roots, and I hoped they were able to grab on to something that was pure energy and not exactly solid.
A deafening explosion shook the ground followed by a hailstorm of rocks and dirt. These two exes were about to bring down the entire room if I didn’t do something quick.
When I felt my wall crackling near me, I knew my roots had succeeded. So I opened my eyes. The spiders dashed toward them, filling everything with black, moving electrical legs and bodies, and a cruel pain dragged through my insides. The room dimmed then flashed red, red, red, like zeroes on a time bomb. Done. Finished.
No.
Somehow I posted my arms underneath me, and even though they wobbled under my weight, I hauled myself into a squat. Hovering in front of me, behind the spiders, my electrical wall shuddered purple through the air, still in slow motion but exactly where I needed it.
I jerked my head into it, or through it actually, and the pains shooting around my body eased. A chain of squeals sounded like a hundred boiling tea kettles, and the little fuckers puffed into black smoke that clouded my vision. Gone, but I wasn’t. I was alive, not technically speaking, but that counted for something.
My electrical wall pulsed at normal speed around my head. Because I was touching it? Because my roots held it in place? I had no idea. I stood inside my wall of energy while the last of the stabs of pain faded. Streaks of vibrant purple danced along my skin as if it was feeding me power. Or I was feeding it.
On the other side of the room stood Gretchen. Smoke wafted from the bottom of her scraps of clothing, and much of her long, scraggly hair had been singed away so it looked like she’d shaved her head. Or wrenched it out. Oh, God, had that been that awful ripping sound? Had she done that to get rid of the spiders? She turned her face, and half the black-webbed, thorned skin had been torn away to reveal nothing but bone and maggots.
I turned away because, despite being empty and useless, my stomach rolled anyway.
Her lethal gaze pointed down at the Counselor by her feet with the boa constrictor also known as my roots coiled around him.
“Gretchen,” he pleaded. “We can still be together.”
She stared at him with a fury I’d never seen on anyone and didn’t really want to ever again. Then she kneeled down toward him, something I didn’t expect she would do. She touched what used to be her lips with her fingertips then brought them to his pasty ones like a farewell kiss.
“Please,” the Counselor said and kissed her fingers. “You could be so much more than you already are. You and me. Forever.”
She stood and waved a lazy hand at the only wall that didn’t have a blood channel climbing up its length, the broken ribbon on the inverted gift in a room meant for her gifts. The trio of gifts she carried and lost one by one to the madman who claimed he loved her. And one of her gifts lay dead for good behind us.
The door that led to the rest of the house appeared once again on the broken ribbon wall, and me and my vibrating purple energy followed the dark Sorceress toward it.
“Immortality, Gretchen. We’ll find another way. Your way, I promise.”
The angry glow in her eyes hadn’t withered with any of his promises. It didn’t make her change her mind, either.
A loud, piercing scream raged through my head. The fifty foot slide of spiked ice hanging in the middle of the room fractured apart in a forceful blast. Sharpened spears rained down, gathering speed. The Counselor screamed.
Behind us, a great storm hailed to the stone floor. Despite what he’d done to Mom, the abrupt end to the Counselor’s wails would likely haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
But neither of us looked back.
Leigh
Gretchen and I stood on the bridge surrounded by orange light, a black void, and that odd sensation I’d had before that I wasn’t alone. My energy had seeped back into me where it buzzed under the surface of my skin, waiting.
The truth about Mom’s death, the Counselor’s final screams, existing in close proximity with the now faceless woman who seemed perfectly fine with killing children as long as they weren’t her children made me want to puke. I jerked away from her to try to get myself under control.
Where’s Tram and Lily? I demanded. Why can’t I hear them?
She stood stone silent for the longest time that I thought maybe it was me who was broken, that no one could hear me.
What could she be thinking, anyway? What did it feel like to be fueled by vengeance for so long and then finally achieve it? I had to wonder if she even knew what it felt like, if she could even see beyond her darkness to feel anything else other than hatred and the need for revenge. She had the capacity for love inside her since it was love for her children that had driven her to the brink of the black magic hole that finally sucked her in. For good? I didn’t know. Didn’t really care, either.
She’d maybe loved the Counselor at one time, though I really didn’t see how that was possible. The oozing chemicals from the thorns all over his face didn’t exactly push him to the top of Guys You Should Introduce to Your Dad list. Not to mention his job as Death, ruler of the Core, murderer, and Trinity children bleeder, but maybe I was just being picky.
Her fists hung at her sides with black gashes cutting through both of them and deeper ones along her neck. The hand that had turned black to turn the Counselor inside out had faded to a sickly gray.
If the Counselor was good at anything, it was beating people up. Under the layers of dirt and grime coating my skin and scraps, I couldn’t tell if I had fared better or worse. Thorns still protruded from my punching hand, and I quickly plucked them out and threw them over the bridge, disgusted yet relieved to rid every last trace of the Counselor from existence.
Static filled my head, followed by Gretchen’s inhuman voice. I could never beat him before.
I nodded since I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was this her version of a thank you? Because I sure hoped it wasn’t. Her minions known as One and Two had me killed, after all. Me, Leigh Baxton, age fifteen, who hadn’t even finished her sophomore year of high school because it had been destroyed trying to get me here. To this very spot right next to her. Meanwhile, I may or may not have helped myself get here from my own mounting darkness, and I may not see my friends and family who were topside ever again.
I grinded the toes of my combat boots into the dirt and held back a hiss because I wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with her. As far as I was concerned, our “agreement” was finished since I didn’t owe her anything else. I never did owe her. She’d have to get over me not groveling at her feet like One, Ica, and the rest of her cult because the only people I wa
s devoted to were friends, family, and the memory of Mom. I never wanted anything to do with Gretchen’s revenge, even though I stood knee-deep in it now, and I hated her for reeling me in anyway.
Something in her eyes flashed, awareness since she’d probably heard all of that, and her body blurred to stand nose-to-nose with me. Bitter cold enveloped my bones despite my deathly inability to feel, but I didn’t back off. I’d thought I wouldn’t pick a fight with her, but I never said I would run from one.
Am I round two? I asked. Killing the Counselor wasn’t enough for you?
She stood frustratingly quiet, and I wondered how long it would take to learn to block all my thoughts. It was a major invasion of privacy. My own spinning mind was usually more than I could handle anyway.
But if she wanted to lump me in with the Counselor because I didn’t bow to her, then oh well. I thought of all the things I could tell her to piss her off, all of which she heard—like roughing up her daughter Lily at Callum’s party or referring to Tram as Scary Boy—in case those were unforgivable acts against her children, too. At the same time, I brought my purple energy up to glow over my dead flesh, just in case she laid a finger or some kind of spell on me.
If anything, though, I really did deserve an actual thank you. My mom had risked her whole Trammeler career to save two of Gretchen’s kids and had faked her own death to go into hiding from the Counselor. Then she’d really died because of the Counselor. Because of Gretchen. She might as well have killed Mom herself.
Heat raged through my gut, and I balled my hands into fists even tighter than Gretchen’s.
You might as well have killed my mom yourself. All she was doing was trying to protect me and my little sister because she knew we were Trammeler Sorceressi, just like you tried to protect your kids. She was trying to protect your kids, too, and you just…didn’t care.
An electric buzz vibrated outward from my chest, and I let both it and all my thoughts about her bubble up with no filter.
A Trammeler Sorceressi is a Trammeler Sorceressi, no matter who its mother, though, right? You needed one, one final dead one, to open the Core, which makes me think it stopped being about having a nice reunion with all three of your kids a long time ago. It was always about what you wanted, about revenge against the Counselor. And that makes you just as selfish and no better than him.
A thread of black magic brewed between her gnarled, thorny fingers while she studied me with narrowed eyes as if she couldn’t quite figure me out. That made two of us.
But before she could fling anything at me, purple currents rushed from my body and smashed into hers. She flew through the air and landed with a boom that shook the stone floor about thirty feet away. With superhuman speed, she shot to her feet and lunged toward me.
Low moans and bursting stone sounded to my left. Stone trees were coming to crush the magic right out of us, but neither of us moved.
I raised my arm of glowing, pulsing bolts that zipped along my fingers and threatened to funnel out my palm if I let it. She crouched within inches of my hand, a black oily substance spinning a web around her own.
We were locked together in a power struggle, stone trees crashing toward us, and I may have been able to take her. But maybe not. Did I want her deader than she already was? Absolutely, but did that make me any better than her? Or the Counselor? Should I embrace the darkness inside me and start killing everyone like Gretchen had just because I wanted them dead? For some reason, the answer to that question wasn’t as clear as it should have been. But what would her final death really solve? It wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t bring Mom back, really back like the way she was before, and I had better, more urgent things to do than waste time on Gretchen.
The stone trees filled my peripheral vision, their roots and branches twisting at the ends of our hair. At the last possible second, before they touched flesh, I turned on them. Purple currents jetted from my palm, and they exploded backward into a fine powder.
You’re welcome, I said because I’d done my fair share. Now it was time for Gretchen and me to go our separate ways. Forever, I hoped.
She stood up straight and relaxed her fists, but somehow I could still sense her slimy magic still writhing inside her fingers.
Tell me where Tram and Lily are, I demanded.
A noise like a creak followed by a sigh sounded to my right, and we both turned our heads. It felt like the nowhere bridge itself was watching us, listening to our thoughts, but it stretched endlessly like always.
Gretchen must’ve felt something was off, too, because she looked off into the distance while I returned my gaze to her. That was twice now she hadn’t answered my question. I refused to let there be a third.
With Gabriela, she growled in that static-filled voice.
Gabriela, Gretchen’s sister, also known as One. She seemed more protective of them than Gretchen. A good thing in a place like this.
I need to talk to Tram about what to do about the surface of the earth and how to close the Core, I said.
Gretchen walked in the direction we’d heard the sound, her head tilted to the side. I didn’t have time for noise-hunting, and her inability to answer questions rotted away the last of my patience.
Gretchen. My internal voice equaled her harsh, gritty one. I readied my roots to snatch her and bring her right back, but she just kept walking.
Her head bent toward the ground as if she was looking for something. Or at something that was invisible to me and my supersonic, blue-tinged eyesight. Maybe her darkness had made her lose her mind. Or maybe she was just dismissing me because my use to her had run its course.
Where there’s smoke, she said, there’s fire.
There went the last of my patience since that answered nothing.
I hurried my roots out of the ground and toward her with a swoop of my arms. They ripped through stone and wound over the cracks, but before they reached her, she snapped her arm up and pointed to the right. A low tunnel appeared where just seconds ago, there had been nothing. Was that how this placed worked then? Point and tunnel?
More stone trees smashed into existence at the use of magic, but Gretchen leveled them back out again with one cold, webbed glance.
At my command, my red roots scraped and coiled across the ground behind me while I stepped toward the opening to the tunnel. Narrow walls with uneven, jagged stone framed a passageway of midnight black barely wide enough for me to squeeze through.
I tossed one last glance over my shoulder at Gretchen, who knelt on the ground facing the drop-off of the bridge. She nodded at something. For me to go inside the tunnel? Confirming the location of where she’d last spotted her brain?
Whatever. I was done with her. I side-stepped into the tunnel since it wasn’t wide enough for me to face forward and guided my hands over the rocks to find my way. Loose pebbles rained down my front, and parts of the wall needled across my skin in one long cut from my palms to my elbows. I hardly noticed.
Tram? Lily? Can you hear me? I’m coming.
No answer, but I pushed on for who knew how long until finally my hands met empty air where the wall should’ve been. I stepped out into a small, stone room lit only by candles attached to the walls. No, not candles. Bubbling lava shaped into a candle’s flame. It burned brighter the farther I stepped inside.
In the corner sat a cage, similar to Tram and Lily’s, but taller, and inside stood both One and Gretchen. Had Gretchen followed right behind me or somehow beaten me here? Whoever said death was easy had never been to the Core.
She and her headless sister faced Lily who stood outside the cage, an ash tree key gripped in her fist and a mess of emotions lighting her eyes. Gretchen slipped something into her other hand, and a wordless exchange seemed to pass between them before Lily locked the cage.
It was such a weird sight to see dead Lily with her flower tucked behind her ear easily imprisoning two dark Trammeler Sorceressi, one of whom was her long lost mother and the other an aunt who had lost her head
. Had they gone inside willingly or had the newly acquainted family had a long chat about the benefits of cage-life? Really, though, Gretchen now had those who had at one time been important to her close. The only person missing was Aneska, but her death hadn’t been for nothing, at least in my eyes.
Leigh.
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice but couldn’t immediately place the direction it had come. After all, the voices inside my head only had one location. But finally, I found him.
Tram leaned against the wall in the far left corner. Light from the lava candles gleamed across the top of his curly head, but it didn’t come close to the same brilliance as the sun. He needed to be outside where it lit the tiny golden specks in his green eyes and powered that gorgeous smile that made my heart stutter. Here, dead, he couldn’t smile, and his glowing blue eyes seemed so sad.
Looking at him like this, dead and defeated in the Core, saying my name but not with his perfect lips, sliced frozen barbs into my heart. It was like he wasn’t the same person, and I hated it.
Tram…
All at once, I wanted to apologize, beg his forgiveness, explain to him exactly how I’d failed him, but the words tangled themselves up in my mind. I had let everyone down, and whether it was because of me and my darkness or because of the spiders inside who had controlled me didn’t matter. I failed. Me. And the guilt came crashing down to bury me all over again.
Leigh, stop, Tram said and hooked a finger around one of mine. Don’t do this to yourself.
How? I asked. How do I stop feeling like I let you down? I single-handedly destroyed everything you’ve done in the past six months as a Trammeler. How much do you hate me right now?
Not at all because you were brave enough to try, he said, squeezing my hand. The lava lights touched his curly hair and moved across the strands as if to give it life. I wished they would. It’s not an easy thing to go up against those who use dark magic. It corrupts, it eats away souls the more it’s used, shoots hawthorns up through your skin if used too much, and running away from it is often the smartest thing anyone can do when faced with something as terrifying as darkness.
The Trinity Bleeds (The Grave Winner Book 3) Page 9