World Tree Girl

by Kerry Schafer

  “I’m not stupid enough to ask if you’re okay,” he says, not letting go of my hand. We traverse the room together, his strength steadying my body’s tendency to lurch and stumble.

  “I have a question for you,” I tell him, after the pain settles into a steady state and I get a handle on it.

  He doesn’t answer, just raises his eyebrows in response.

  “If Sophie has really gone over to the dark side—”

  “Can I do what needs to be done?” he says, face and voice grim. “Do you think it will come to that?”

  “She was worried about it. After Betty. She talked about the power, the lure, of wanting a soul. Her fear that she was a monster because she’d killed.”

  “And then she got the letters. What do you think really happened with Jill?”

  I shiver. Maybe it’s my sweat-soaked shirt. Maybe not.

  “Could have been something to do with that spirit storm. If she’s sensitive to that kind of energy. It was intense. Or…”

  I leave the thought hanging. Jake is strong, but the question that lies unspoken between us is a hard one. I play through the scenario over and over in my mind, and every time I pause before the killing shot.

  Serves me right for getting attached. I know better. If I had to shoot Jake, for example, I would definitely hesitate. Even Matt, who I have so many reasons to mistrust, would be damnably difficult to kill.

  After about an hour of brisk walking, Val takes a right turn into one of the intersecting tunnels. Almost immediately, we reach a spiral staircase, set into a stairwell. It curves upward about twenty feet where it stops abruptly at a ceiling.

  I grasp Val’s arm to hold her back as she sets her foot on the first step. “Wait. Where do you think we are?”

  Jake whistles tunelessly, looking up, thinking. “The elevator shaft dropped us to just below Shadow Valley, if those elevation marks are right. And we’ve walked, I’d say, a couple of miles. My guess is we’re under the town by now, or at least pretty darn close. If this was meant to be some sort of bomb shelter, it could make sense to be able to get back and forth to town.”

  My leg certainly feels like we’ve walked a couple of miles. I am not excited about climbing these stairs. “If that’s a blast door, we’re not getting through.”

  “Might just be a regular trapdoor,” Jake whispers, although there’s nobody in sight. The beam of his flashlight plays on the stairs and the ceiling above. “I’ll go first and get it open.”

  He’s right, of course. I’m only halfway up by the time he discovers a latch system, which he unhooks. When he pushes up against the ceiling, a trapdoor raises easily. Val is right behind him and he gives her a hand up, then reaches down for me.

  By common agreement, we all move like cat burglars, keeping low and not making any noise. Jake has switched off his light and the only illumination comes from the moon shining through a stained glass window above. We’ve surfaced into a rectangle big enough to hold a church choir, with wooden pews polished and dark with age. It smells like every museum I’ve ever been in, a combination of furniture polish, mothballs, and old carpet. Shadow Valley doesn’t have any museums, but it does have an old church that pretty nearly qualifies as a cathedral. It’s a tourist stop, and people actually make a detour through town to come in and make ooohing and aaahing noises over the stained glass windows, the carved woodwork on the pews, and the statue of the Virgin Mary that presides over a set of battery-operated candles.

  Good thing I’m not Catholic, because I’d have been cast out as a heretic long ago. I’ve never understood the attraction to the Holy Mother. Sure, she suffered. Horribly, I’m sure, but she’s not the first mother ever to lose a child, nor will she be the last. Just because her son was divine, I figure it doesn’t give her exclusive rights on the whole martyred saintliness business. Judas’ mother probably suffered more, if you think about it.

  We belly crawl forward to the railing, another insult to add to the grievances my body is going to hold against me for this day’s work. My guesses are right. This is a choir loft. Most of the sanctuary is in shadow. There is just enough light to pick out some of the colors in the stained glass windows and to show me a solitary figure kneeling in front of the candles.

  In the old days the candles were at least real. Now you push a button and an LED comes on to signify your prayer for the dead. The worshipper was apparently not satisfied with the change, and has brought a candle of her own. Its flame shines clear and bright amidst the artificial light of the others. The girl’s head is bowed, her face hidden, but I know that fall of long black hair.

  We’ve found Sophie.

  Before I can decide whether to call out or to make a stealthy journey down the stairs and try to surprise her, a move I’m not likely to pull off since I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get up off the floor again, a man joins her.

  He stops in front of the statue and tilts his head upward, as if studying the Virgin’s face and trying to arrive at a decision.

  “If I ask her for a soul, would she give me one?” he asks, after a moment of silence.

  The man’s face is now directly in the light and I recognize it. That face, here, with Sophie, means nothing but trouble.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Vince is dead and has no business showing up in a church. The whole story Aunt Leo told now sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, a tale made up to get the heat off her nephew. I can only hope that Mac is not complicit.

  “What was that about a soul?”

  “Joking,” he says. There’s something too flat about his voice, as if it never got the memo about intonation and pitch. “What about you? You were—praying. For what?” The hesitation before praying sets all of my alarm bells ringing. Either he doesn’t know the word, or it doesn’t want to come out of his mouth.

  He looks more rat than vampire, but he could have the blood sucker gene. God only knows what creature they crossed him with. Despite all of my fears about Sophie’s life choices, I want her to morph into full-blown superhuman mode right now. Instead, she’s never looked more human—lost and vulnerable, and heartbreakingly young. “You didn’t sound like you were joking.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t. It’s not the sort of thing you can say to the average person.”

  “I’m not average,” she says.

  A cold wind swirls around me, tugging at my hair, my clothing, then sweeps down into the sanctuary. Val’s eyes roll back in her head, and a soft moan escapes between parted lips.

  “Damn,” Jake curses. “Showtime. You ready?”

  Ready or not, something needs to happen. We’re too far away and we’re ill-equipped.

  “Don’t go down there,” I try to tell him, but he’s already moving, leaving me and Val to our own devices.

  Blue light envelops Sophie. She brushes at it, as if it’s a cloud of gnats or mosquitoes. “For the love of Thoth, can’t you leave me alone? Even in a church?”

  “Number One-Oh-Three,” Vince says, in that same flat tone. “Parents, Lysander and Jaz. Experimental element, Soul Sucker.” His face alight with curiosity, he takes another step toward her. His nostrils flare, and he makes a snuffling sound. “You’ve killed.”

  “Who are you?” she says, recoiling, either from him or the cloud of spirits. “What do you want?”

  “Answers.” He stretches out his arm and plunges it into the blue light, tipping his head back in ecstasy. “And souls. They are beautiful. So incredibly beautiful. How do they taste? Tell me.”

  “I don’t eat them.” Her voice is thin and strained.

  “How can you resist? So many here for the taking.”

  “That’s not how it works,” she insists. “They cross. I help them cross. I don’t—”

  “But you’ve killed.” He presses closer to her, both hands immersed in the blue light. “I know you have.”

  Blue fire coils around both of his arms. His body jolts, as though he’s been struck by electricity. He laughs out loud.

 
; Jake is close now, just behind Sophie. She’s focused on the spirits and Vince and hasn’t seen him yet. I have no idea what he thinks he’s going to do to intervene. I try to pick up my pace, but the ladder climbing has taken its toll and I feel like I’m trying to run in quicksand with a broken leg.

  “What is going on here?” a new voice asks.

  Between keeping my attention on Sophie and Vince and the difficulty of navigating the stairs, I’ve totally missed the entrance of yet another player.

  Eve pauses halfway up the aisle. Her eyes dart from Sophie to Jake, to me on the stairs, and then focus on Vince.

  “Oh, good,” he says, turning away from Sophronia and taking a step toward Eve. “Our answers have arrived.”

  Even in the dim light I see her face change color. She staggers and almost falls. One hand goes to her heart, the other clutches a pew for support.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “No, of course not.” Her voice trembles at first, but she recovers, steadies. “This is fascinating. Are you the one who asked to meet me here? I thought it was Sophronia.”

  “I had a message to be here,” Sophie says. “Why?”

  “Answers. We deserve them, don’t you think?” His face looks put together wrong. He walks as if his body is unfamiliar, a small hesitation with every step. I’d like to believe he’s handicapped, maybe he’s always walked this way, the modified DNA rerouting brain signals and causing motion malfunction, but that’s the fairy-tale version. Barring that, I’d like to believe he’s just come back from the dead. Much as I hate zombies, I’m beginning to see that what we’re facing here is much more sinister.

  Vince lurches toward Eve.

  “I want a soul,” he demands. “Give me one.”

  “A soul is just a concept,” Eve says. “Nobody knows for sure if there even is such a thing—”

  “I know what a soul is. Alice had a soul. The Siren girl had one, too, but hers was different. And this girl—Number One-Oh-Three—has more souls than she knows what to do with.”

  His right cheek droops like melting wax, slipping down off the cheekbone. His lips seal together and lose their color, leaving a flat expanse of skin between nose and chin.

  “Are you our maker then?” Sophronia’s voice is clear and cold. “Responsible for what we are?”

  “I had only a small part in it,” Eve says. Despite her obvious fear, there’s a note of pride in her voice.

  Vince reaches up to touch his cheek, misses, and corrects his aim. A crease burrows into his forehead, followed by another. Wrinkles appear under his eyes. His hair lengthens, whitens.

  “Stop it,” he mutters. “Stop it, stop it, stop it. We are Vince now.”

  The hair shortens itself into a buzz cut, turns dark. The skin smoothes again into Vince’s features, but the arms raised to press both hands against his temples are feminine, smooth, tattooed in full sleeves of twining branches.

  I need the salt sprayer and the silver. The only weapon I have is Phil’s flashlight and I’m not entirely sure it’s going to work.

  “The girl who died, the one with the world tree tattoos. She was like me,” Sophie says.

  “Yes and no,” Eve answers. “Part of one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of all time, yes. As you are. But her abilities were different.”

  “And you killed her.” Bathed in the blue spirit light, her eyes glowing green, Sophronia looks more like an avenging spirit than anything I have ever seen.

  Eve is braver than I would have given her credit for, or else she doesn’t yet understand what is happening here. Instead of running screaming for the nearest exit, she stops retreating and answers, with dignity, “I had nothing to do with her death. Why would I waste valuable research in that way?”

  “Give me my soul,” Vince threatens, “or maybe I will take yours.”

  “This is not Oz,” Eve says, facing him, “and I am not a wizard. Either you have a soul, or you don’t. You can’t get one by stealing it.”

  A hole forms where his lips should be and a tongue pokes out, flickering, snakelike. Lips re-form and the tongue licks them, then retreats into the mouth. “Can’t keep it, maybe. Can take it from you. And taste it. Taste souls and memories, yes.”

  “Memories have no taste.”

  He advances toward her. She backs up again, stumbles, bumps into the end of the pew. Her gaze travels to me. “Help me,” she says. “I did not create them. That was Alice.”

  Vince’s face is melting again. This time he uses both hands to remold it. “A technicality. A lie. You had conversations. You had talks. You and mother. Plans. Give me a soul.”

  “I can’t. There is no technology, no science—” She screams as his hands melt into her flesh. His lips cover hers, silencing her.

  “Go ahead and shoot,” I shout at Jake. I figure if we kill Eve with the bullet, at least it will be a more merciful death. He won’t, though. He can’t. He’s a cop through and through, and she’s a civilian. I don’t have this limitation.

  Phil’s ashes are in my way and I drop them. The container hits the floor with a thud and the lid comes off. This is a story that’s getting old by now, but I’ve got no time to worry about that.

  Laser in one hand, gun in the other, I open fire. Bullets rip through the Medusa, rocking its borrowed shape, and for a moment hope rises that the thing has become human enough to die.

  It’s a short-lived hope.

  All of the blood belongs to Eve, and it turns to a red, gelatinous ooze before it hits the floor. The laser is another story. Where I shine it, ragged holes appear in the creature’s pseudo skin, black around the edges. The Medusa is one monstrous, bulging body now, part Vince, part Eve, but it still has two heads.

  Under the assault of my weapons, the heads break apart. One mouth screams, human, terrified and in agony, the other lets out an inhuman wail.

  I take a step closer, the laser blasting another hole into the Medusa’s gelatinous flesh. Smoke curls up around the edges. It retreats, losing its human shape, dissolving into a shapeless mass. Jake approaches from the other side, ready to plug a round directly into the creature’s body.

  And then Phil’s flashlight dies.

  I hit the On switch again. Nothing.

  I shake it and try again. Still nothing.

  Maybe the battery has gone dead. Maybe something’s wrong with the laser gizmo or a bulb has burnt out or the spirit interference is to blame. Whatever the reason, it only takes a few seconds for the Medusa to realize I’ve got nothing.

  Over the sound of my own ragged breathing I watch the thing re-form. It loses human shape while it heals—a giant, quivering amoeba, with human bone and hair visible at the center. The bullet and laser holes fill in and knit together. Where my silver bullets struck, the jelly bulges and ripples, ejecting the silver out onto the floor, where they roll out of reach beneath one of the pews.

  “What do I do?” Jake asks, holding his ground.

  “All the bullets you’ve got. All at once.” I reload, wishing for the first time that I carried a gun with a magazine. “Ready?”

  I shift around to stand beside him, to make sure neither of us dies by friendly fire. But before either of us can pull the trigger, Sophronia sets herself between us and the thing.

  “Sophronia!”

  “You can’t kill it,” she says. “Not like that.”

  At her words, the Medusa reshapes itself around Eve’s bones. It doesn’t get the face quite right, but in the dim light it can pass for human.

  “She’s right,” the Medusa says, in a close facsimile of Eve’s voice. “I can’t be killed.”

  “Sophie. Move out of the way.” Jake’s voice sounds desperate. His weapon is steady, though. It’s a comfort to have him solid and strong beside me.

  Sophronia ignores him. “Why them?”

  “Souls,” it wails. “Bodies. I took what I wanted.”

  “Memories,” I say. “Abilities.”
>
  “They aren’t really yours,” Sophie whispers. “Borrowed. Stolen.”

  “Mine. If I can use them, they are mine.”

  Which is when I finally see what is at risk, what I ought to have seen a long time ago. My blood runs cold. For the first time in my life, my hand holding the gun begins to tremble.

  “Sophronia, please step away. It means you no good.”

  “Why borrow one soul when I can taste them all?” The lascivious smile on Eve’s face is so incongruous it makes me twitch. I’ve been edging around the side, trying to get to a point where I can get a clean shot without hitting anybody else.

  Just when I’m there, my finger tightening on the trigger, Sophronia steps in front of me again. “No.”

  “Sophie, in case you’ve missed it, this is the Medusa.”

  “It’s a monster,” she agrees. “So am I. Will you kill me, too, for doing what I was made to do?”

  “What you were made to do is help spirits cross into the otherworld.”

  “And look how well I’ve succeeded.”

  I can see how the number of spirits filling the church just now wouldn’t make her feel like a great success as a soul guide. I’m still not sure why they are here, what they are trying to accomplish.

  Sophronia turns from me back to the Medusa. “Do I have a soul?” she asks. “I was wondering. You asked me what I was praying for when you came in. I never said. Forgiveness. For the souls I have taken or misled.”

  The spirits raise a fuss at this. Wind swirls through the sanctuary. The lights flare and dim. Sophronia throws her hands up in the air in frustration. “If you want something, say it, for once. Or just get out of here and leave me alone.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” a voice says from the stairs.

  I damn near drop my gun. It’s Phil’s voice. Spinning around, I expect to see some revenant from the dead. Instead, I see only Val, her body outlined in blue light. She descends the rest of the stairs and stands with her feet in Phil’s ashes while his voice continues to come out of her mouth.

  “We’re not going anywhere until that thing is dead.”