Doors became visible on either side of the hallway. Niall tried one of the handles, but found it locked. The more they walked, the more uneasy Niall felt. He patted the pockets of his shirt, hoping to find something he could use as a weapon. But he had nothing left save one of the golden dog statues he’d forgot to place on the floor, and he didn’t think a dog statue was going to do much damage to Laneth.
“Niall,” Aisling whispered. “The portraits.”
Niall’s chest tightened as he peered closely at the wall. He realized with a start they no longer showed images of Lady Greymouth. Instead, they depicted his own face. His, and Aisling’s. They were painted inside the house, wearing strange historical clothes, but they were doing all the things they’d been up to over the last few weeks – twirling together across the ballroom floor, painting murals in the drawing room, walking together through the forest bathroom, reading in the library, shooting arrows at porcelain dogs, practicing their sword technique in the entrance hall. The artist had perfected Aisling’s lips, her tumble of brown curls, and his haughty expression and toned shoulders.
Fear clutched Niall’s chest, freezing around his heart. How did this happen? Where did this hallway come from?
More importantly, where is it leading us?
For the first time in his life, real terror pressed against Niall. He didn’t have an enemy he could fight. This, whatever it was, was so much more powerful than he could ever be.
Aisling didn’t seem as disturbed by the hallway or the paintings. She pressed on ahead, dragging him along in her haste to discover where it led. The light in the hall grew brighter, until it started to blind them.
Niall took a step into the light, and he wasn’t in the hallway anymore. The light faded, and he stood in the center of the ballroom, at the very edge of the buckling floor. Long vines, like the ones that hung all through the hidden forest, snaked down from the ceiling and criss-crossed the floor.
“How did we get here?” Aisling asked, whirling around. But there was no hallway behind them, only a blank wall. Widdershins wandered across the floor toward them, his nose lifted high in the air.
“Meeerw?” He gave Aisling a questioning look.
Sound returned. They could hear the muffled shouts and bangs of the fae trampling through the house beyond. The ballroom doors shook on their hinges.
“Now is not the time for questions.” Niall grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the back of the room. The wall shimmered as they drove past. They ducked down behind the piano, holding each other tight. Aisling bowed her head, raising her hand to the ceiling, her eyes closed as thin slivers of blue smoke curled through the air and entered her fingers.
Niall realized with a start that the ballroom hardly glowed blue any longer. The aura that used to glow brightly from every surface of the room had faded. If he squinted hard, he could just make out a faint glimmer in the gilded ceiling above their heads, the threads of atern flowing down and entering Aisling’s hands.
The house was nearly done. It had very little atern left. Would it be enough to defeat Laneth?
When her palms glowed blue, and there was no more atern falling from the ceiling, Aisling lowered her hand. Niall wrapped her in his arms. Widdershins stalked around the perimeter of the room, occasionally letting out a defiant meerrrw!
They waited.
In the hall beyond, the shouting grew louder. They heard something scraping across the ground. They were moving the wardrobe. The bolt holding the doors closed started to lift from its hinges. Niall squeezed Aisling’s hand. You can do it, he willed her. You can stop them from getting in.
Aisling squeezed her eyes shut. Her whole body tensed. The bar slammed back down.
“Nice one,” he said. Aisling grinned.
“Meeerrrw!” Widdershins let out a loud bellow. Aisling whipped her head around. Niall followed her gaze. The cat was standing in front of the wobbling wall, staring at the door, his eyes wide and frightened.
“Widdershins, no!” Aisling cried, but Niall knew she was too late. The black cat leapt into the wall, and disappeared with a sickening plop.
Aisling’s whole face fell. Tears pooled in her eyes. Niall gripped her with fierce affection, trying to drive out the pain of her heart breaking with the strength of his embrace.
“He might not be dead,” he said, stroking her hair. “Remember, he’s gone through there before. We thought the wall might be—”
“He’s gone, I know it,” Aisling whispered, her hand against her heart. “Don’t ask me how, but I can feel it. Widdershins is gone forever.”
The bar slid back up again. Aisling screwed up her face. Niall watched in awe as she drew back the pain that threatened to overwhelm her, and channeled her magic back toward the door. She managed to pull the bar back down, but it was harder this time. Her whole body was shaking. The bar started to lift once more.
‘It’s no use.” She shook her head. “Some incredible force is dragging it up. It will soon be too strong for me.”
Niall watched the faded blue aura of the house flicker around the door, the tendrils wrapped tight around the bar. He glanced down at the golden dog statue, lying on its side under the piano where it had fallen from his pocket. His gaze fell on the opposite wall, as the surface wobbled, like the icing on a cake before it had set.
Something occurred to him. A wild idea, a crazy idea, an idea so ridiculous and imaginative he knew it couldn’t possibly have come from his own mind. The house had given him a gift. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew that he was right.
“Drop the bar,” he told Aisling, his face breaking out into a wild grin. “Let them come.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Maybe, but I think I know how we get out of this. Or rather, how you get us out of this.”
“I’m trying my best, but Laneth is more powerful—”
“No, he’s not. Because you’ve controlling the house. It doesn’t need atern, because it has you.”
“That doesn’t make sense! I’m not doing anything.”
“All this time,” Niall said. “I thought the house was doing all this, talking to me through the void, giving me these messages, sending you and I just what we needed, exactly when we needed it.”
“But the house is useless now. Laneth has taken all of its power.”
“Then where did the hallway come from? How are we still alive? Why did the house bring us to this room, the room from my dreams? Think about it, Aisling. It isn’t the house doing all this.” Niall stroked her cheek. “It’s you. It’s been you all along.”
“It’s not me. I didn’t do this. I couldn’t.”
“I don’t think you’re doing it now. I think you set all this in motion a long, long time ago.”
“You’re not making any sense!” Aisling’s face screwed up. The bar dropped another inch. The banging on the door grew louder, more urgent.
“I don’t think I have time to explain it all, but I know I’m right. You have to trust me, okay? Do you trust me?”
Aisling looked stricken. For a horrifying moment Niall thought she would say no. She sucked in a breath, and squeezed his arm. “Yes, I trust you.”
“Then drop the bar.”
“I repeat, are you nuts?”
“This house is part of you, Aisling. It’s an extension of your own powers. You’ve lived inside it for most of your life – for two lives, in fact – and your magic has become part of it, and it a part of you. I know you’ll survive, because if you don’t, then none of this could have happened. Drop the bar.”
Aisling closed her eyes, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, the bar clattered away, and the doors flung inward, the heavy wood crashing against the ballroom walls. Laneth stood in the doorframe, a silhouette of shimmering blue, tiny lightning forks crackling from his fingers and the top of his head. He was flanked by two Venators, their bows pulled right back against their ears.
Aisling whimpered, her whole body trembling. Niall clutched her tighter, pressin
g her against the marble floor, using his body to shield hers. I hope I’m right about this. He took a deep breath.
“There’s no point hiding, Niall,” Laneth said, striding into the room. “I’ve taken every last drop of power from the house. It can’t protect you any longer. This is still going to end in your death.”
“If you want us,” Niall called from behind the piano. “Come and get us.”
He craned his neck right around, watching as Laneth strode across the dance floor, heading right for the area where the floor had sunk into a dimple. Beneath him, Aisling’s body grew warm. He could see her aura growing around her, around her body. The blue shimmered with flecks of purple light. He’d never seen purple before. But he didn’t have time to ponder it.
“Now, my love,” he whispered in Aisling’s ear.
“Now what?”
“Maybe I won’t kill your little witch friend right away,” Laneth said, as he stepped carefully over one of the large vines. “Perhaps I’ll bend her over that piano and show her how a real fae makes a human submit. Would you like to watch that, Niall? I’ll make it fun for both of us—Hey!”
Laneth teetered on his feet. At first, Niall thought he’d just tripped over one of the vines on the ground, but there was nothing beneath him except smooth marble.
Then he noticed it. The floor bucked and rolled, like waves crashing against the shore, before the shores had all frozen over. Laneth screamed as his feet were knocked from beneath him, and he fell heavily onto his back. Behind him, the two Venators struggled to remain upright as the vines whipped and wriggled across the floor, wrapping themselves around their ankles and dragging them down.
Aisling sat up, suddenly possessed of great strength. She tossed Niall aside as though he was a sack of feathers, and she rose up to her full height, which now appeared very high indeed. The blue light of her magic danced across her face, and she raised her hands toward the ceiling, like a priestess calling down her gods.
“Get out of my house!” she yelled, and her voice didn’t seem to only come from her mouth. It was as though all the walls, the ceiling, the floor spoke her curse into the world. Niall realized it was Aisling’s voice – echoing a hundred times through the ages – that had been calling him from the void, as she now called down her powers.
Laneth stared at her, and for the first time, Niall saw fear in his eyes.
The floor turned into an ocean, a swirling maelstrom. The marble flowed toward the center of the room, drawing up in a great wave before slamming down into a deep, dark whirlpool, its center a cold abyss.
Laneth tried to stand, but his feet slipped from beneath him. The vines that held his two guards rose high, dragging their terrified prey, dangling them above the abyss. The fairies cried and gibbered for mercy. “Let us go! We’ll do anything, please just let us go!”
The vines obeyed, releasing the fae, dropping them straight into the swirling hole. They screamed for a long time as they fell, until their screams faded away completely, replaced by the roar of the beckoning abyss.
The floor tilted further, and Laneth skidded closer and closer to the edge of the hole. “Help me!” he cried out to Niall, scrabbling against the smooth floor for some hold. Niall shook his head. Laneth’s eyes grew wide with terror, and he slipped away, screaming as he toppled into the dark abyss.
Silence pierced his ears. Light surrounded the ballroom, seeping from the darkest corners, casting the enormous room in a field of bright sunlight.
“You did it.” He embraced Aisling. She fell against him, her body heavy as she let out the tension that had consumed her. Niall’s heart soared as he rejoiced in her victory. “You brave, beautiful woman. You—”
His adulation was cut short by a horrible crash from above. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. The light grew brighter, achingly, painfully bright. The vines that trickled around the edges of the room shuddered, and drew away.
It was sunlight all right – the light from an irradiated sun, rising from the void to devour them all.
Another great crash, and the whole room shook. The piano slid across the floor, toward the gaping hole. Aisling’s aura fizzled. A long crack arced across the ceiling. As the house continued to groan and shake, the crack opened further, revealing an inky blackness as it spawned a hundred tiny fissures radiating out from its edges.
“What’s going on?” Aisling cried, staring at the cracks forming over the ceiling. She gripped the edge of the piano to steady herself. “I don’t understand. I stopped Laneth.”
“But the atern is still gone. The Hollow is destabilizing,” Niall said. “The whole thing is collapsing into the void. We’ve got to get out of the light!”
Aisling’s face hardened. She broke into a run, skidding across the lurching floor as she tried to scramble toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Niall called after her, reaching out to grab her before she pitched over.
“We have to get outside. If we can reverse the ray, we may be able to put enough atern back into the house to make it stable—”
From a distance, he could hear the phone in the library ringing. He grabbed Aisling’s arm and dragged her back, flinging her against his chest just as the floor pitched again, sending one of the vines twisting down into the void.
“It’s too late,” he whispered. “The Hollow is gone.”
“It can’t be too late.” Her face was wet with tears. “We won. Why do we have to die?”
“We don’t have to die,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
“We were so close.” Aisling sobbed into his shoulder. “We had happiness. Why couldn’t it have stayed this way forever?”
“We can still have happiness.” Niall pointed at the wobbling wall, remembering Widdershins picking his way across the ballroom, his steps deliberate, purposeful. The cat had made the journey before.
A large piece of plaster broke away from the ceiling, crashing in front of them. Aisling flinched.
“You want us to … jump into the wall? We’ll die!”
Niall dragged her across the floor. “We don’t know that, and we’re going to die if we stay here, so what difference does it make? Besides, your cat looked awfully sure of himself, and I’ve heard that cats have a sense for these things.”
“Where does it take us? Outside to the city? Won’t that just fall into the void as well? Will the destruction of the Hollow collapse the void in on itself?”
“I don’t know!” Niall grabbed one of the vines, steadying himself as the floor tilted further. He used the vine to drag them both to the wall. The surface pitched and wobbled. “I’m not a bloody astrophysicist. But I don’t think it takes us to Medietes. I think it takes us somewhere else. I think it’s how Widdershins kept getting covered in grass.”
Aisling grabbed the vine, staring into the wall. Her lip quivered. “What if we burn up?”
“If you burn, I burn.” He wrapped his arms around her. “This might be the last time I hold you. So if we are really going to die, right here, right now, then I am going to make sure the last words you hear are your legacy. I love you, Aisling. I am a better person because of you. You are the only person who made me feel like I had more to do in my life, more to be, then just a soldier who took lives. You gave me life. You forgave me. And it is the greatest honor to die with you today.”
“Oh, Niall,” Aisling sobbed.
“But I don’t think we’re going to die, because you are even more amazing and clever then you give yourself credit for. I think we’re going to live a long time, and be very, very happy together.” An almighty crash shook the whole room. One of the gilded pillars crashed to the ground, shattering the marble as it toppled into the void. It was so bright Niall could only just make out the outline of Aisling against the brilliance. He squeezed her extra tight. “We have to go now. Are you ready?”
“If you burn, I burn,” Aisling said, her cheeks streaked with tears. She gave him a beautiful, sad smile.
Niall kissed her, his lips ab
laze. Aisling wrapped him in her warmth, the magic in her veins pulsing through his skin, tearing out every last doubt. All that remained was her, his love for her, his complete and total faith that at the end of the day, after everything he’d done to mess things up, this woman, this amazing woman, had saved them both.
Their fingers entwined, their lips together, Niall and Aisling toppled into the wall, sinking into the plaster as the burning sun swallowed the ballroom whole.
25
Aisling
Aisling slammed against something hard. Her bones crunched, her entire body exploding with the force of the impact. She imagined herself scattered like stardust across the cosmos, her essence a streak of light in the endless darkness of space.
Time passed. She waited, gasping, until the pieces of her body seemed to coalesce again. Her shape took form. Her muscles knitted together, the blood once again ran through her veins. And with her form came the pain, rolling over her like a dark cloud, bringing her mind back to the circumstances of her disembodiment. Wherever and whatever she was now, it had forever changed her.
Time passed.
Aisling had no way of calculating how long she lay face down, the skin of her face crawling with strange fibrous wisps, her skin crushing against her bones, her veins alight with molten lava.
So this is dying.
The pain faded to a dull roar in her ears, an ache coursing through her body. Aisling lifted her head, and forced her eyes open. Bright light pierced her vision. After a few moments, her eyes adjusted. She lay in a field. The wisps that tickled her face and skin were long stalks of maize, blowing gently in a cool breeze. A few inches in front of her face, a bright blue teacup sat on its side, half covered in soil. Right next to it, one of Niall’s arrows stuck from the soil like a porcupine quill.
Beyond the edge of the field, Aisling could see trees, and the pale line of a dirt road extending on through gently sloping farmland. There wasn’t another soul in sight. Where is Mother? Where’s Bethany and June? The only consolation of dying was that she’d be reunited with them, but shouldn’t they be here?
Hollow: Isa Fae paranormal romance (Fallen Sorcery Book 2) Page 20