“Darby…,” I said once my fingers found the belt.
Mrs. Baxton’s gaze snapped to mine. I froze, her hollowed face just inches from mine. So there was a part of her still in there if she recognized Darby’s name. And she had come back to her familiar home.
“Huh?” Darby said from the backseat.
Mrs. Baxton’s whispers stirred into a frenzy around our heads, but it didn’t come from her pinched mouth that sagged open in a silent scream. It came from inside her, as if her soul was communicating from a great distance. But it was still there. With her. With us. Which might explain the notes Mrs. Baxton left for Leigh. Her soul was still here, somewhere, trying to communicate with her daughter.
I took in a shallow breath, inhaling some of Mrs. Baxton’s decayed corpse, and tried to fit the seatbelt into the lock with trembling hands.
“Keep your eyes closed, okay?” I told Darby.
“They are.”
“Good. Don’t open them until I tell you to.” The lock finally clicked, and I sat back in my seat again with my eyes squeezed shut, too.
I didn’t know what Cal had said to convince Darby she needed to keep her eyes closed I told her to, but I silently thanked him in my head. She didn’t need to see her dead mom riding in the front seat or me squishing over everything roaming the streets, and she definitely didn’t need to get any ideas from whatever magic we might see on the way to the graveyard. If we even made it to the graveyard.
“Seatbelts,” I barked. “You’re going to need them.”
“You wrecked my car, Weed,” Callum said behind me.
“But you’re alive. You’re welcome.” I put the car into reverse and watched the rearview mirror for anything to hit.
As long as the escaped undead’s eyes glowed blue, I could convince myself that they were soulless and needed to be wiped out from existence. I had no idea if I was right, but I couldn’t pause the apocalypse just to have an ethical argument with myself.
After testing the car’s hydraulic system many more times, I swerved into our driveway, popped the trunk, and jumped out.
“Where are you going?” Cal shouted after me.
I grabbed the crowbar, and with gritted teeth said, “Nobody messes with my cat.”
The tree I climbed as a little kid dropped withered, blackened leaves to what once was lush green grass. All of our windows were shattered. Our screen door didn’t exist anymore, and our front door had been reduced by half. The undead had either drifted to the next house or were inside rifling through my underwear drawer for some catnip or whatever. I didn’t know what I would find in there, couldn’t prepare myself even if I did, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least check.
Steeling my spine, I shoved open the remnants of the front door. “Elf!”
A horrible, rotten stink laced with regurgitated eggs replaced the usual sweaty sock smell. I held a fist to my nose, the same hand that Darby’s bracelet decorated. Whatever was in my house with me wouldn’t be able to detect me before I went all serial killer on them with my crowbar. Especially if they had touched one silky hair on Elf’s head.
Whispers from unseen sagging mouths mixed with shattering glass at the back of the house.
Seconds passed, then two glowing orbs appeared at the bottom of the basement steps. Not blue. El gato diablo green. He seemed okay. Pissed, but okay.
My throat clamped shut, but somehow, “Here, kitty” squeezed through.
Through the kitchen to my left, shoving around the chair at the dining room table Darby had sat in minutes—hours?—before, was a dead girl. A girl with glowing blue eyes, a few strands of blonde hair, and decked all in black clothes.
Leigh.
A strange, choking noise ticked at the back of my throat. I sagged against the bannister that led downstairs with a trembling groan and shook my head hard. Downstairs, Elf spit out a low hiss that sounded an awful lot like my heart deflating.
Nonononono. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t see my best friend back from the dead. Tears burned down my cheeks, taking the strength I thought I had with them.
The closer she drew—a black blur behind my tears shuffling through the kitchen—the tighter I held to the crowbar, though I had no idea what I planned to do with it. No way could I bury it inside her skull. No way. Not ever.
“I love you, Leigh. I’m so sorry.” The words sounded strangled, garbled, but seemed to fall on deaf ears. She couldn’t sense me, which somehow seemed even worse than if she could.
Her blue gaze landed on the metal bars that connected the stair bannister to the floor as she came closer. Her deadly smell, her being here, pressed me backward. But not enough to let her pass by me and venture downstairs with Elf. Dead best friend or not, I had my limits, and almost every single one of them had been severely crossed tonight.
My muscles tensed as she drew nearer with slow steps. My heartbeat’s slams matched the flow of tears. But something on her left hand caught my eye. Something shiny and huge wrapped around one of her peeling fingers, and unless Leigh hadn’t told me everything about her life, I could swear she wasn’t married.
This wasn’t Leigh at all, but I couldn’t find any relief in that. As soon as the dead imposter rounded the corner deeper into the house, unaware of my presence, I patted my leg at Elf.
A gray streak shot up the stairs and leaped over my feet on its way outside.
Cal opened his door to let him inside the car.
I clutched the crowbar against my chin and forehead and sobbed into the cool metal for a moment before racing to the car. To the graveyard. Hopefully to Mr. Baxton. To total and completely blinding uncertainty.
Leigh
Between the rushing air, the flying grit, and the panic whipping through my body, I swore I heard a whispered laugh. Dead Ica, or ghost Ica, or whatever form she took apparently wanted the last word. Her role as Two had literally been crushed out of existence, and now there would be hell to pay.
The farther Ica dragged me down, the tighter my chest clenched. The air had grown thinner in the dark, constricted tunnel she sucked me into until my lungs held my last breath. Once again, I was being buried alive, but this time under miles and miles of the earth instead of a few feet of dirt.
Nothing had changed from before. Ica was still trying to kill me, and I still clawed and kicked and fought for survival. Because I was alive and she wasn’t. Sucked to be her.
Still, my lungs burned, and my skin felt as if it had been peeled off with hurtling rocks and grit. Dirt filled my nose, my ears, my eyes, disorienting my sense of direction.
I sent my roots around my feet in a stupid attempt to catch smoke, to find some way to stop my decline, but we were plunging too fast. She could be dragging me toward the Core or to some other type of hell where she could punch a straw through me and suck all the power and life out, but I refused to be the Capri Sun in her lunchbox covered in crazy.
Besides, the sun had a nasty habit of rising even when I didn’t want it to. This time, though, I couldn’t burrow underneath the bed covers when it did. I needed to be topside, armed with the know-how to close the Core. Or else it would stay open forever.
Air. Now.
I wouldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t, because too many people who meant the whole world to me needed me with them right then.
My Trammeler roots weren’t working, which meant my Sorceress side had to. I drew the power from the center of my heart, felt it trace outward with each slam of my heartbeat, and uncoiled it out of my fingertips. Something bright purple sizzled and bounced toward my feet at the same speed as the lights exploding behind my eyelids.
Keep. Mouth. Shut.
Maybe I imagined the purple energy. Maybe I didn’t. It was hard to tell when Earth was crashing in on my lungs, but Ica was still tearing through the planet with me in tow.
Neither magical side had worked. Except the me side, the side that made me the scrapper that I was. I wasn’t dead again yet.
My roots raced past my arms and under my feet to stop my backward bullet momentum with a jarring vibration up my spine.
My mouth opened at the shock, enough to sift dirt inside, but I slammed it shut again. No breath. No air. But I was almost free.
Up, I demanded, and without Ica to stop them, my roots wasted no time. But how much time had I wasted? How many minutes until sun-up now? Stupid Ica and her eternal hatred.
Rainbow colors whirled behind my eyelids in a rollercoaster spin. I hoped I wouldn’t be sick, or I would lose the precious sliver of oxygen that still kept me alive.
Faster, I willed my roots.
Pain. So much pain racked through my body, but I had been through too much to give up now, to inhale dirt when all I wanted was sweet air.
Finally with one last heave, my roots shoved me out into the open. Air blasted through my scorched chest on a loud wheeze, but it was anything but sweet. Didn’t matter, though. I couldn’t drag it into my lungs any faster.
My fists, clenched against the carpet in the darkened video store, arced an electrical current between them. Ica’s shapeless mass bucked inside my fingers and fought for escape, but it wasn’t as though I could hold on to her forever.
An inhuman moan somewhere inside the store silenced my gasps. Footsteps crunched over spilled movie cases by the door.
Even though I really, really didn’t want to, I held my next breath inside my aching lungs. Ducking my head, I peered between the bars of a fallen display stand. An impossibly tall shadow stood across the store, barring me from the outside world, while glowing blue eyes lasered in my direction.
The metallic taste of my own heart coated my tongue, and I froze. It wouldn’t take that thing long to find me, not with my glowing hands and the squirming ghost caught inside them, but I didn’t have time for a lengthy battle with every single escaped Sorceressi I came up against. I didn’t have time to be afraid, either, or to weigh my next decision for more than two seconds.
Since revenge and hate fueled Ica, even in death, she would have no trouble finding me again. So I released her. She sprang up and disappeared into the darkness.
I stood, energy still crackling between my fingertips, and ticked my gaze to the beast that lurked inside the video store with me. It charged at a superhuman pace, and I didn’t even think. I whisked the power in my hands toward it, through it, to ram open the door.
Glass exploded. Wet, sloppy sounds hit the walls around where the Sorceressi had once stood, but my gaze narrowed in on the scene outside and nothing else. Each step that marched me closer to get a better look knotted the helplessness even tighter around my throat.
The fragile threads that had once held reality together had been ripped apart with vicious force. A woman lugging a suitcase ran across the parking lot with her kid in tow. A moment later, a hunchbacked Sorceressi followed. At the gas station across the street, several more had climbed the outer walls and were peeling the building away as if it was made of paper while a huddle of wide-eyed people watched from the brightly lit inside. Hundreds more crawled the streets.
When they weren’t tormenting humans, they tortured each other. Next to an abandoned police car that had crashed into the road, a Sorceress circled a Sorcerer who had dropped to his knees. Every time she sliced her blue gaze in his direction, his arms twisted at unnatural angles.
Everywhere. Oh, my God, they were everywhere. And not just in Krapper. The whole world would be like this.
This was my fault. I did this. If it was intentional because of the darkness that may or may not live inside me, then I was officially changing my mind. Nothing was worth this, not power, not anything. The fear, the devastation—none of it.
How many people had died because I died? How could I ever make that right, let alone close the Core back up again? And where did I even begin?
My boots ground the broken glass into dust as I stepped over it and out into the nightmare world. The police car hadn’t crashed into the road itself like I’d thought, but into a deep crevice in the earth. It ran from the direction of the graveyard and cut across the street as far as the eye could see. Was Heartland Cemetery even there anymore? Was Dad still there?
There were too many things I needed to do at once, too many people I had to save, and I only had—I fumbled for my phone with slick, shaky hands—one hour.
Time to start now, then.
Bloom, I ordered my lilac energy. A spark ignited in the center of my palm and snapped from finger to finger into a buzzing frenzy. I zapped it toward the torturing Sorceress and the Sorcerer with the broken arms, toward the escaped prisoners peeling the gas station across the street like an orange, and reduced all of them to black sludge.
The people inside the gas station stood from their huddle and blinked at the thick globs smearing down the windows and doors. A little girl with dark skin pointed in my direction and said something to the others, but I turned my back on all of them, on the guilty feeling I should’ve felt, but didn’t.
There I was dealing out my own special kind of punishment for escaping the Core, and I probably should’ve been bothered by this epic destruction of what had once been a life. But I wasn’t. Like, at all. That part of me must still be dead. Surely it would be resurrected eventually. Surely it hadn’t winked out for good like a dying star in the night sky.
Unless it had. And that ripped open the festering doubt in my gut with a frozen claw.
I couldn’t get rid of every single escaped prisoner that way, though, which didn’t make me feel any better about the apocalypse I’d started.
Tires screeched to my right, and a car swerved to avoid hitting the crevice in the road. Its bright headlights threw haloes into the backs of my retinas, and I could only stand there blinking, almost completely blinded.
A ball of red energy fell out of the driver’s side door and slammed it shut. A back door opened, too, and a head popped out, slowly as if whoever owned that head couldn’t believe what it was seeing.
These movements seemed so familiar, so ingrained in who I was and who I wanted to continue to be, I started running across the parking lot before I realized why.
It didn’t take long, though. The closer I drew, the tighter hope clung, so warm and alive in my chest. The boy with the rip in his t-shirt and the magic ability to make my heart beat faster. The girl in the patchwork dragon scale skirt who shoved her bottle-red hair out of her face to stare, open-mouthed, with tears shimmering red and blue in the spinning police car lights from the crevice to her left.
Callum. Jo.
My face cracked on a smile as I ran toward them, my beacons of light in a stormy, dark nightmare. A nightmare that could become permanent if I didn’t hurry.
Leigh
Jo didn’t make a move to throw herself into my waiting arms, so I stopped a few feet away, hurt by her reaction, but also so happy to see her that I didn’t really care. I was probably too scary to look at with my scraps of clothing covered in miles of dirt and muck and blood, and had been dead just a few minutes before. Not like I could blame her, but she was equally decked out in blood that better not be hers, so much so that her Badass Recycler t-shirt now read Bad Cycle. That described the last few days better than I ever could, but what had happened to her?
“Is this real life? Are you really alive?” Jo said over the sharpening wind, her voice cracking. “Because if this is some kind of sick joke, I’m going to start swinging my nun chucks.”
Callum stepped up next to her, away from his car, covering up one eye with the hand that had started to violently shake ever since he buried Mom again. His other good eye burned right through me with the smile that always
started there first, then curled his mouth the way that made me forget how to breathe.
“Did you really think Leigh Baxton, Sorceress Slayer, would stay dead?” he asked, but his awed tone betrayed the confidence in his question.
“No joke.” I jumped the crevice in the road then wrapped Jo up in a hug to prove to her by squeezing her and never letting go that yes, I really was still alive. “It’s me.”
“How?” she asked, her voice throaty, but she hugged me right back.
Too late, I remembered that she’d eaten lilacs to prevent dark magic Sorceressi from getting too close, but it obviously wasn’t working very well.
“Me first,” I said into Jo’s brassy hair. “The lilacs and hawthorn twigs didn’t work?”
Jo stiffened and shook her head. “The ones outside our house blew away, I guess, and something killed the lilacs in our stomachs.”
I glanced at the shuffling Sorceressi—and Sorcerers, but I was going to lump them all in under Sorceressi to save the s abuse—all around us, ready to raise my magical hackles if they so much as looked in our direction. For now, the hawthorn bracelet wrapped around Jo’s wrist kept them at bay. Darby’s bracelet.
“Your turn,” Jo said.
“It’s a long story, one I don’t have time to tell, because I need to close the Core before sunrise.”
Callum’s uncovered eye widened. “Why does it sound like there’s an ‘or else’ attached to that?”
I pinned my gaze to his warm one through the strands of Jo’s blowing hair. “Because there is. If I don’t close the Core, there won’t be anywhere to put all the escaped prisoners. The cells below my roots won’t hold all of them.”
Jo pulled away and clasped her hands on my shoulders. There was a desperate hardness to her grip and to the edges of her face I hadn’t seen before, and I didn’t like it. What had she and Callum been through tonight to make them drive out in the middle of all this?
“What can we do to help?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted and looked to Callum again. “Where’s Darby?”
The Trinity Bleeds (The Grave Winner Book 3) Page 13