Roses & Haunts

by Selena Page

  Alynia walked over to him, stared down at the body, and froze. “Did you say ‘Abraham’ and ‘Bones?’”

  “Ja,” he nodded, eyes instantly alert. “You have discovered a clue, my lady?”

  “Ja—I mean, yes. Tell me, was Bones Von Trapp in love with Linnet Caprice?”

  “Ja,” he answered slowly. “Why?”

  “Let me guess, Mayor Caprice didn’t like the idea of his only daughter marrying a sawbones, did he?”

  “Ja,” Jerrick said again, the rest of his men falling utterly silent, riveted to her words. “How did you know?”

  Alynia knelt down, fingers probing the wound at Von Trapp’s throat. As she predicted, the head rolled away from the rest of the body. “Cannonball to the head,” she murmured, staring up at him. “It should have killed you. Dammit, I was wrong.”

  “Wrong, how?”

  “I thought the cannonball firing over our heads that night we met was supposed to be the one that killed you, Jerrick. It wasn’t.”

  “I do not understand, lady Aloisia. What have you discovered?”

  “You were supposed to be the Headless Horseman, the ghost that haunts this place in my time.”

  His men crossed themselves, steel ringing aloud as swords slid free and pistols loosened in their holsters. Ready to defend their Captain, their brother, and their friend with their very lives. Jerrick closed his eyes, lifting the cross from beneath his shirt and pressing it to his lips. “If such is my fate.”

  She slapped the cross from his hands, glaring. “For the love of all that’s good, Jerrick, if you’re going to marry a Caprice, you need to dig deep for a bigger set of balls. We don’t lay down like doormats or accept ‘fate’ without just cause. We aren’t romanticized heroes throwing our lives away, either. We’re going to work together and we ARE going to stop this from happening. So let’s ride.”

  She spun away on her heel.

  Iowin! I know who the killer is, and it’s not Linnet. I know why you couldn’t find Bram Bones. There was truth to the legend. Stars, it was right here in front of us way back—I mean forward—in 2016. She’s innocent!

  There was no reply, not a whisper of love across their bond.

  There was… nothing.

  Iowin?

  IOWIN!

  “Jerrick, I know who’s responsible for your situation and I know why,” she cried, running for the mausoleum doors. “Hurry, or we’ll never save them all in time!”

  Chapter 11

  Silence greeted the company as they rode through the west gate of the city, unnatural quiet as familiar to Alynia now as a shiver dancing up her spine. She did her best to suppress it, failing miserably. Foreboding choked the once-lively streets, dread walking arm-in-arm with death around every shadowy corner. There was no life in the village, at least not in the traditional sense. Everything was frozen in time, smashed to stillness beneath a magical plate of glass, like flowers pressed between the pages of books.

  Alynia slid down from the back of Dagger, temporarily forgetting her fear of the great beast of a horse and patting it comfortingly on its hindquarters. Dagger shook his mane in appreciation, whickering softly. She couldn’t blame the horse for it. She certainly wanted someone to comfort her right in that moment. The rest of the warriors appeared to have similar desires, silently dismounting and placing hand to mane or neck of the war steeds. All eyes coolly surveyed the streets of their once home, viewing shops and empty carts as possible threats rather than happy places of commerce.

  “What devilry is this?” Conrad whispered, his voice barely carrying past their group. “Where are the sounds and the street lamps?”

  “Where are the tower guards?” asked another.

  “The clouds,” Jonas pointed at the sky. “They do not move. They were racing through our travels to the graves and back. Why are they not moving now?”

  “Look,” the fifth member of their party gestured to the treetops barely visible above the wall. “Why are they not standing straight? They blend like they are caught in a strong wind, but there is no wind. Branches do not grow in tilted directions.”

  “It’s magic,” Alynia growled, drawing her glock and popping off the safety. “Stunners,” she whispered, the click-clack as the weapon shifted ammo, a welcoming song to her ears. “I’ve felt this type of spell before. It happened the night before Iowin and I came here.”

  “He is like you, then,” Jerrick drew his sword, the ring of steel echoing as his men followed suit. “A guardian of the dead.”

  “In a roundabout way, yes,” she nodded. “He’s supposed to be working on the spell to undo your curse and send us back home.”

  “He has my best wishes for the first,” Jonas smirked, and then shrugged a shoulder at her glare. “I like you. Our Captain likes you. I am not the only one that wants you to stay with us.”

  Another round of murmured approvals, with their dear Captain wisely not making a sound either way. Alynia gripped her weapon in both hands, bringing the familiar weight up and parallel with her left ear.

  “Which way?” Jerrick asked instead.

  “The garden behind the Inn. That has to be ground zero for the spell. At least that’s where we found what was left of it in our time.”

  He nodded once, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Wait. We have been honest with you, Lady Aloisia. We have made you part of our company. Be honest with us. Tell us what you have discovered.”

  The others turned in unison, earnest faces peering at her from all directions. She took a deep breath. Dammit, she didn’t want to do this to them, but they had a right to know.

  “If I’m right about this, and I usually am, you all have been used as a living anchor for the spell that cloaks this village. Where I’m from, the Headless Horseman doesn’t exist. It’s a myth, a story created by a traveling author to scare people for fun. Now I know that you all did exist, and that someone used magic to make this village invisible to the rest of the world. Think about it. Why hasn’t the war touched these lands yet? There should be British troops all over the place, scouring the village for supplies and all but stealing the crops right out of the ground. The war isn’t going well for them, or for you.”

  They nodded, one by one.

  “Someone is keeping this village a secret, and if their intentions were pure in the beginning, they’ve gone dark. Each time you ride off to battle and are hurt, that hurt transfers to someone in this village. Someone chosen not at random by this spell, but by the caster’s will. They’re using each of you to power the spell by destroying their enemies through you. Sending you to certain death every day provides more bodies, more souls, to shroud this city from unwanted eyes.”

  “But merchants and tradesmen come to Sleepy Hollow all the time,” Jonas countered. “If the village is invisible…”

  “Nein,” Conrad interjected. “Lady Aloisia said ‘unwanted eyes,’ not all eyes.”

  Jerrick hissed in German, and judging by the tone of it, he should be asking them to pardon his French… err, German. Yeah, looked like he understood exactly what she was driving at.

  “Who knows the traveling schedules of the merchants and tradesmen better that we do?” he asked his men.

  One by one, their faces darkened and their swords glinted in the frozen moonlight. Oh, they understood, alright. Who had the most to lose if the city fell? Who would murder the undesirable suitor of his only daughter? And who inside the city and possibly beyond for miles, aside from Iowin Tintreach, had the innate power to pull off a spell like this?

  “Mayor Henry Caprice,” she snarled, chambering a round and bringing her gun back into ready position. “Let’s go stop us a madman.”

  Darkness covered the garden behind the Caprice Inn, shadows concealing their approach. Nothing moved in the alleys between the building and the garden save for their group, footfalls carefully placed to use that silence to their advantage. It wasn’t until the outer wall came into view that movement and light returned. Torches blazed at random intervals, j
ammed into flowerbeds or in crevices in the statues, the flames blue-white, twisting the shadows they cast in unnatural forms. Like the shadows, themselves, were scrambling with all their might to escape the evil being worked in that place of lush life.

  And there, next to the lavender roses--

  IOWIN!

  It took everything, every single ounce of her control, not to betray her position and scream out his name. To not run towards the love of her life and hurl all her magic at him. Not to harm, but to save.

  Iowin stood to one side of the garden like a statue, himself, hand outstretched towards … what? Her fear, her terror for him, blinded her to the signal that should have been so clear. His palm was up though, his middle finger crossed behind his index, the rest curled into his palm. Like crossing of the fingers for good luck? She frowned, holding her own hand up to signal the rest to pause. No, that couldn’t be it. Why would Iowin signal her for good luck? And how would he have known she was approaching from that direction? She didn’t know which way they’d approach until arriving in the quarter, herself.

  Dammit, there was no time to puzzle it out. Her beloved husband was caught in the trap, frozen in time, and she didn’t have the Jag in which to race from it, either. Talk to me, Iowin, she prayed. What are you trying to tell me?

  Silence answered her, the most soul crushing silence of her entire life.

  “Aloisia,” Jerrick whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. “We are in position.”

  “Go,” she breathed back. “Carefully. We don’t know what that son of a bitch has planned for us. And we don’t know where Linnet is, either.”

  “You believe she is helping him?” he asked, voice thick with swallowed emotion, the warrior within fighting against the man who wanted nothing more than to save his love.

  It was a sentiment she could utterly agree with.

  “It’s a possibility,” she conceded. “If she is, I don’t think she knows she’s doing it,” she rested a hand on his shoulder. “She loves you, Jerrick. She’d never do this to hurt you. Remember that.”

  He swallowed and nodded once. “Viel Glück,” he whispered, and faded into the darkness.

  She hoped that was what it sounded like. Good luck to you, too, Jerrick.

  Alynia took a deep breath, pressing forward. More of the garden emerged out of the gloom, flowers frozen in strange angles, like the breeze had come at all directions at once before vanishing altogether. Pressure increased as she approached, that horrific thickening of the air like just before an electrical storm. Her nerves tingled with it, her breath coming faster.

  Linnet Caprice lay in the center of a wide circle of twigs and dead grass, her eyes open, transfixed on nothing. Clasped between her hands was the spellbook. But her chest moved up and down with the rhythm of life, that ruby around her neck flashing in the torchlight with each breath she pushed past her teeth. Some of the pressure in Alynia’s chest eased. Her cousin was alive. Whatever spell froze this place in time wasn’t situated on her, and she wasn’t helping with it, either.

  As if she were its focus, the thing that ground it to the earth and powered it all at the same time.

  Shadows moved from her left and right, tiny glimpses of movement as the Hessians surrounded the garden on all sides. They were out for blood tonight, blood to avenge all those dead in order to fuel the dark magic. Blood to avenge what had been done to them. She had no desire to stop them, and for a tiny moment she understood what had driven Iowin to fall into Sean Shadowblack’s trap all those years ago, why he clung to bits of it now. There was only so much pain and horror a person could take before they wanted to shell out a little payback.

  Maybe the mercenary life wasn’t all that bad. Maybe, just maybe, she’d let him dig that stupid cell phone out of the trunk for the rest of their honeymoon.

  She was a Hessian, now, after all. Call a spade a spade or however the saying went.

  Alynia took her position by the wall, sliding silently against it and around the corner before slipping into the cover of a large hedge. Iowin stood before her, the posture of his hand bothering her for some reason. Looking at it up close, she could only think of the sign language symbol for the letter “R.” But why would that letter mean anything to her? How could it help—

  R. The letter R.

  As he stood before a bush damn near overflowing with…

  With roses.

  Her mind flashed back to earlier in the evening, watching Iowin stoop to pick up the rose that’d fallen from her hair. Jonas had stopped him, swooping down to pluck up the bloom as if it were worth more than diamonds. Part of her had to wonder if he was the mysterious member of Jerrick’s crew that had offered to ‘compensate for those mistakes’ of her past by proposing marriage.

  At the time, her only plan had been to seduce him into her confidence, to possibly use him to get leverage on how to get her and Iowin out from under Jerrick’s ever-watchful eye. He’d had the flower with him the rest of the night, displayed proudly on his jacket lapel.

  She needed that damned flower.

  Carefully she crept along the wall, moving towards the end of the gardens near to where Jonas was supposed to launch his attack.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Lady Aloisia Caprice,” Henry chortled, his voice coming from everywhere at once. “At last we can get on with the final protection of Sleepy Hollow.”

  Chapter 12

  Everything happened all at once. And by everything, she meant the equivalent of a freaking atom bomb going off at her feet. Hessians exploded from every direction, daggers whipping through the air and musket balls firing at alarming speeds. Apparently one of them knew where the Mayor was hiding, and the rest followed the direction of that first thrown weapon. Alynia wasn’t any different, pointing her weapon in the general direction, but holding her fire.

  “Jonas,” she screamed. “I need the rose! I need it now!”

  No one answered her, and she didn’t expect him to. She’d made him the most valuable target on the field aside from herself. He wasn’t going to give away his position unless he absolutely had to.

  Weapons bounced soundlessly off the circle containing Linnet, Henry Caprice materializing at long last within its safety. “Fuck,” Alynia murmured with feeling. “Hold your fire. It’s not going to do you any good.”

  “Listen to the lady, my Hessian friends,” Mayor Douchetard advised, his hands clasped behind his back. “You cannot reach me within the circle. Very soon, you will not be able to reach me at all.”

  “Let the girl go,” Jerrick stepped out of the shadows, crossing into Henry’s direct line of sight. “She has done nothing to deserve this.”

  Henry glanced down at his daughter, smiling faintly. It was like watching a skull smile. Or a jack o'lantern. Just creepy all freaking over. “Linny won’t come to harm at all. In fact, I’m doing all of this for her. She’s my child, my pride and joy. I’ll not see her lose her home or her future to some hired mercenary. She’s a good girl. She deserves better than you.”

  Alynia bit her lip, frustration and fear gnawing at her guts. Jerrick was providing cover, a distraction, so Jonas could make his way towards her. That much was painfully clear. The question was, would Jonas make it before Henry lost his temper. Those were odds she didn’t want to put money on—ever.

  “Ja, she does,” Jerrick nodded, pressing his hands to the invisible wall separating him from his heart’s desire. “I strive every moment to be worthy of her love.”

  “You’re not worthy to lick her shoes, Hessian,” Double Douchtard snarled, flinging out a hand. “You’ll die time and again for her, your soul feeding the power that keeps her here forever. Young forever, alive forever. Safe. FOREVER! Her love for you will bind this spell.”

  Jerrick screamed, hands clawing at his throat. A gash of white light, barely more than a millimeter flashed between his fingers. A thin line slowly growing across his throat.

  “NO!” Alynia screeched, leaping from the shadows and firing at the
barrier. Her bullets bounced off the protection spell, uselessly evaporating into the night. “Dammit, stop it. You don’t know what you’re doing. This is black magic, Henry. Curses never work for the betterment of anything. That’s why they’re curses, you fucking idiot. You’re binding your daughter deeper into the hell you hope to pull her out of. Think about this!”

  If he heard a word she said, he ignored it. Henry knelt before his daughter, brushing strands of copper curls from her face. Again, he had that serene look of all fathers, pride and love and devotion transforming his ugly mug into the gentle serenity of love.

  Either that, or the serenity of the truly mad.

  In the firelight, crystalline tears made trails down Linnet’s pale cheeks, and Alynia swore she heard a muffled scream. She was fighting. Linnet Caprice was fighting her father’s spell with all her might, desperately trying to reach her true love. Henry’s fingers trespassed across the lavender bloom of the rose tucked delicately behind her ear, either too blind to understand the significance, or too lost in his own madness.

  She was willing to bet on the latter.

  “Her mother loved this garden,” the madman crooned. “I built it for her. I built this whole village for her. The Revolution took my Samantha from me, killed by a ricocheted shot when she ventured too close to the fighting. All she wanted to do was heal, and her magic was so good at healing. I’ll not lose Linnet, too. You don’t understand.”

  “I understand plenty,” Alynia kept her gun level with his left eye, slowly crossing the distance to where Jerrick writhed on the ground. “You’re not the only one that lost loved ones to war.”

  He scoffed, rising to his feet and walking right up to the line of that circle of power. “What do you know of it, woman?”

  “You think a man is the only one that can know true loss,” she knelt down beside Jerrick, fingertips reaching out to the glowing gash spreading slowly along his throat.