Shutter

by Courtney Alameda

  “What are you doing here?” I shrieked.

  “She won’t let us leave,” Ethan said, hugging Fletcher tight. Both boys were shackled at the ankle. Now I knew why I’d heard Fletcher singing, seen their shadows haunting the woods … my mother trapped her baby boys here.

  “Micheline!” Mom screamed. The boys clapped their hands over their ears. She appeared at the top of the stairs, her fingers extending into long claws. I looked back at the boys, realizing failure meant more than death for me and my friends.

  I would not fail my brothers a second time—so I did what I should have done eighteen months ago. I turned and ran for the panic room and slammed the metal door closed. Mom hissed, flickering, disappearing, just as I’d hoped she would. She reappeared at my side and bashed me into the wall. Held me fast.

  “You were always the obstinate one,” Mom said, her claws piercing my back. I gasped, pain ravaging the rational thought in my brain. “Stubborn to a fault, just like your father—”

  “And proud of it.” I managed to twist my wrist and hit the flash, pitching back the shadows. She startled. I wrenched free of her claws, shoving off the wall and body-slamming her into the opposite one. Her head made a crack against the drywall.

  Pushing away, I leapt for the stairs, but she tackled me to the ground. I rotated and thrust my right elbow into her jaw, wincing when pain bit into my shoulder. I hit her again, loosening her grip, and shoved to my feet to sprint for the stairs. Twenty feet should do, I thought.

  I spun on the ball of my foot and palmed my camera.

  “Trying the camera again?” Mom said. “Little fool, it won’t work.”

  She stood right in front of the stainless-steel panic room door, which reflected her bubbling violet light.

  A smile touched my lips.

  I aimed my camera, zooming in till all I could see was Mom. She threw back her head and laughed. I crossed myself and hit the shutter. Electric pain rammed into my eye, hot and fresh, and something warm leaked down my cheek. Please let it be tears. Mom screamed, the shot smashing her into the door. She turned her head, saw the burnished metal, and gasped. Before she could push away, I shot her again, and again, and again. Pinning her. Filling the whole hallway with throbbing white light. Shooting her until I thought the pain would axe my head in half, until my camera crackled with her energy and ghostlight.

  I watched her wither through the click of my shutter, my vision draining down to almost nothing with each successive shot. When my right eye gave out, the pain shoved me down to my knees. Through my left, I could see her crumpled at the base of the panic room door, barely more than bones.

  “Clever … girl…” Her voice was hardly more than a rasp.

  I couldn’t sit straight. My soulchains pulsated in my arms, drawing corset tight around my ribs. No time left. Hitching my camera on my belt, I got to my feet. Everything hurt, everything ached, so I shuffled to her side and fell to my knees.

  Mom looked like she’d been mummified, her skin shriveled back against bone, her teeth exposed in an awful grin. She tried to lift her hand but couldn’t, her shackles weighted her arms like anchors. Only her ocean-blue eyes remained vibrant. When I was little, I’d always said my favorite color in the world was the blue of Mom’s eyes.

  Every bit of her broke my heart, but her eyes just cracked me open.

  “You have killed me twice over,” she rasped.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I came to free you from this place, to save you from that psycho’s lies.”

  “He was here for me, he said my fury was his fury.…”

  “Only to shackle your soul,” I said. “I don’t know who murdered you, but I will find them and make them suffer.” I felt the weight of the promise settle on my shoulders like a mantle, and I meant every word, Helsing tenacity and all.

  I touched one of her cuffs, finding the metal cracked. Weak, and powdery to the touch. “Let go, Mom.”

  “I don’t believe you.” A tear leaked out the back of her eye socket. “I won’t.”

  A laugh snuck out of me. Or maybe it was a sob, I wasn’t sure. “Damn your Helsing stubbornness.”

  She tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. I ripped her cross from my throat, holding it out for her to see. It glittered in the anemic light, almost producing its own luminescence.

  “This belongs to you.” I put the cross in her palm, sandwiching her hand between my own. “Give me your vengeance in return, and take the boys to a better rest than this one.”

  “I … can’t…”

  “Go home,” I said, tears pricking my eyes and spilling over.

  She blinked slowly, her autumn-leaf lids crackling. When she reached up to touch the tears on my face, one shackle cracked and fell off, hitting the floor with a hollow thud.

  “For me?” she asked.

  “They only fall for you,” I said. “I love you.”

  “Even now?”

  “Always.” I pressed the back of her frail hand against my cheek, the one my father hit and bruised. “Me and Dad both, always.”

  Her lips parted and she gripped the cross in a fist. “Your father…” She drew in a rattling breath, her ghostlight fading. “He always said you were born with a brave heart.… He was right, Len was always…”

  My breath caught, but before I could say anything else,

  Her other shackle snapped open,

  And her ghostlight died away.

  The miasma in the walls turned to carbon ash, which slid down and made dunes against the baseboards. Mom’s presence began to retrograde in my body. I felt the chains breaking down, my own soul surging forth and smothering them.

  When she was gone, I clutched her hand and sobbed. I’d lost her a second time, and now I’d never see her again. I missed her desperately. I missed her more than my innocence, I missed her more than my father’s pride, I missed her more than my old happiness. Her death left a hole in my life, one I could never fill with anything but memories of her—but those did not a mother make.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” I bowed my head over her body.

  Without warning, white light filtered through my eyelids.

  A whole light, the color of an entire, pure spectrum—

  And Mom’s hand squeezed mine.

  OBSCURA, 00:00

  WHEN THEY WERE GONE, I sank down against a wall, promising myself I wouldn’t cry. My family was free, safe from the Obscura’s terrors, safe from Luca. And with my mother and brothers at peace, I could lay my guilt to rest, too.

  I bent my head over my knees. Pain and I were old acquaintances, but we hadn’t been this cozy in a while. My body felt flimsy, my limbs cardboard. A dull ache hammered through my skull, scattering my thoughts, and I could barely move the fingers on my right hand. Long minutes passed as my stress, fears, and pains circled through my system and drained out. The anger slid away, too, leaving me exhausted. A small price to pay to send my family to rest and save the lives of my friends.

  Downstairs, the foyer floor creaked.

  I looked up. “Ryder?”

  No answer.

  “Jude?”

  Silence.

  Quietly, I reached for my camera and pushed to my feet, creeping down the staircase, watching the shadows. I didn’t find anyone in the foyer. Nothing lurked in the family room. Maybe I hadn’t heard anything more than the phantom creak of an old, worn house.

  Everything stood still as I eased into the kitchen.

  I barely saw the shadow of the rifle’s stock before it cracked against my head.

  * * *

  WHEN I WOKE, I had to claw my way to consciousness. Sight came back in degrees, like a photo developing in a chemical bath. I couldn’t make sense of the kitchen chandelier hanging just a few feet over my belly, or how I couldn’t move my arms or legs.

  Everything came into focus with ghoulish clarity: I was tied to the kitchen table, Vitruvian style, with thick rope and big knots around my wrists and ankles. Knives glin
ted on the table beside my hip, big ones used to break bones and serrated ones for sawing flesh. Adrenaline gushed through my system. I fought the knots, pulling and straining against them until the ropes were slick with sweat. With every passing minute, my heart thumped harder.

  All the knives lay out of reach. I spotted my camera atop the kitchen island, alongside Jude’s M16 rifle, my monopod, and Dad’s Colt.

  The upstairs floorboards groaned. I fisted my hands, my breath sawing in and out of my throat. I tried to think rationally, but my thoughts scattered and ran.

  Footsteps echoed on the stairs.

  The foyer floor creaked.

  A dark silhouette stepped into the kitchen. “Have you figured me out, nymphet?”

  “I know you’re a psychopath,” I said, straining against my bonds. “Does that count?”

  He laughed. “Perhaps a demonstration will help you understand?” Crimson swirled into his irises, the color of ripped-out, cochineal hummingbird throats and darkroom safety lights. Luca unbuttoned his coat and dropped it to the floor, then removed his shirt in a smooth motion. Lightning forked under his skin but didn’t fade, his veins lighting with a deep cobalt blue.

  “Vampire,” I whispered.

  He smiled fully for the first time—a toothy grin, one that exposed his long canines. He ran the tip of his tongue up and down one of his fangs.

  “Not just a vampire,” he said. “I am the vampire.”

  My gaze fell on the circular tattoo on his shoulder, a dragon with its tail curled around the base of its head. The details converged so fast, the epiphany slammed my brain into a brick wall. I arched my back, trying to win leverage from my bonds. “You-you’re lying—”

  “I’m surprised you failed to make the connection before now. Don’t you read Stoker’s dratted book in that academy of yours anymore, now that the vampire has been ‘exterminated’?” He made air quotes around the word. “Pity, you’d think I’d still be required reading.”

  “I’ve read it,” I said, snarling. “And you aren’t him, you aren’t Dracula—vampires don’t have souls.”

  “You humans are always the experts, aren’t you?” He chuckled, a deep sound that caught me in the navel and pitched upward. “Tell me, do you know why vampires don’t have reflections?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “That’s exactly right,” he said, twisting my meaning. “We go to hell. Once the body is turned, a vampire’s soul becomes trapped in the Obscura, rendering us incapable of producing a reflection or traveling through mirrors.”

  Luca stepped close and ran a knuckle down my bruised cheek, chuckling when I turned my face away. He took hold of my chin in his forefinger and thumb, and forced me to look at him. “My people are condemned to wander this eternal twilight with no hope of respite, while our bodies are shackled to the night on the other side of the mirror. In some cases, we are shackled to dust.”

  “Are you looking for pity?” I replied through my gritted teeth.

  “No, little Helsing,” he said. He leaned toward me, so close his scent of funeral flowers and moldering dust filled my lungs. “I’m looking for a way out.”

  He leaned down and kissed me. I bit him hard, but the pain only made him laugh. He pulled away, black blood spilling off his lip and down his chin. It splattered on my skin, cold as ice, and stained my lips and teeth. He tasted rotten, like I’d bitten into a piece of slimy fruit.

  “Be careful, or I might return the favor,” Luca said, leaning over me and running his nose along the column of my throat. My chest heaved as he breathed me in, and I trembled when he ran his teeth over my jugular.

  “You will make a lovely handmaiden,” he murmured, rising and dithering over the knives by my hip. His hand hovered over a serrated nightmare first, then settled on a cruel-looking cleaver. He examined himself in its reflection, straightening a lock of his hair before smiling at me. “I don’t usually start with the face, but in your case…”

  He angled the blade so I could see a slice of my reflection: wild, wide eyes and sweat-scabbed skin; my bangs plastered to my brow. I narrowed my eyes, drawing on the dregs of courage left to me. “You’re sick,” I whispered.

  “Nymphet, I haven’t been sick in centuries,” he said, pressing the blade to my chin. I strangled a whimper in my chest—I wouldn’t let this monster see me cry. I wouldn’t give this old enemy the satisfaction of seeing a Helsing scared. “Do you know who my girls were, before they died?”

  I swallowed the knot in my throat and didn’t answer.

  “Your women,” he said, lifting the cleaver away from my chin, lining it up with the rest of my face. I gritted my teeth, balled my fists, and refused to close my eyes. I’d stare him down until the end. “Your Helsing women, Harker women, Stoker women, and Seward women,” he whispered. “I’d trick them into touching silver panes and then torture them into subservience—”

  I snarled. “Then you’d better kill me, because there’s no way I’ll ever serve a monster like you.”

  With a savage shout, he swung the knife like a small axe, right at my face. The blade stopped a razor’s width above my nose. I sucked in a breath and held it, careful not to move.

  “My, my, you’re a brave one,” Luca said. “I thought for sure you’d scream, but I suppose I’ll have to cut you for that. One last thing before we begin: Don’t expect salvation. While you were here playing with Mommy Dearest, I let my handmaidens into the compound to finish your friends off.”

  I closed my eyes. “You’re lying.” A rind of fear grew on my voice.

  “Actually, that’s the goddamned truth,” someone said.

  Luca spun on his heel. Gunshots rang out—one, two, three—catching him in the chest. The exit wounds splattered his ghastly flesh all over the table, my skin, and his knives.

  The cleaver clattered to the ground. Luca fell to his knees, touching the wounds as if they weren’t his own. Jude stood by the kitchen island, smoke rising off his rifle’s muzzle. Ryder leaned on the wall in the entryway. They both looked battered—split lips, blackened eyes, noses and mouths gory and red—but alive.

  I called Ryder’s name as he moved toward me, and he grinned. Even I heard the relief sobbing out of me.

  “How…,” Luca gasped.

  “We’re bloody hard to kill, you bastard,” Ryder said, his words wheezy.

  “Believe us, you’re not the first one to try.” Jude grabbed Luca by the arm and shoved him away from the table. Luca sprawled to the floor, his gaze locked on mine.

  Taking a knife, Ryder cut through my bonds and helped me sit up. He framed my face with his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my aching, rope-burned wrists. “I’m sorry, I’m—”

  He put a finger on my lips. “You did it, love. Nothing else matters.”

  I touched his blood-soaked shirt, my hands shaking. I’d seen my mother’s hand plunge into his chest, he should’ve been … could’ve been …

  “How are you standing?” I asked.

  “Pure grit,” he said with a grin, though pain traced lines between his brows and made tracks at the corners of his eyes. He looked a shade too pale, and when I cupped his cheekbone in my palm, he leaned his forehead on mine. “I’m going to need a place to crash soon,” he whispered.

  “I’m here to catch you,” I said.

  Jude swore and fired a shot, punching a hole into the wall. A cyclone of black miasma whirled off the floor, coalescing into a black bat. Luca’s body was gone, transforming into a creature with ratty fur, tattered wings, and gaping wounds. He tumbled through the air toward the broken windows, leaving a splatter trail of black blood on the table.

  “Shoot him!” I cried.

  Jude took aim, but the bat toppled headlong past the open sill and escaped into the shadows beyond. Luca split the night with three shrieks—the same call I’d heard while climbing the bridge. Somewhere in the distance, the girls screamed their answers.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, holstering
my camera and tossing my monopod’s strap over my chest. But with Ryder in such bad shape, we’d never make it back to the mirror we’d leapt through, the one back on Angel Island. I doubted Ryder would even make it as far as the compound warehouses … but maybe I could bring back a mirror.

  “Where do we get an unsealed mirror?” Jude exclaimed.

  “I’ll go to the warehouses—”

  “No,” Ryder said, and when he coughed, it sounded wet. Bloody. “I won’t let you go alone.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said. “You won’t make it to the warehouses in your condition.”

  “Try me,” Ryder said, but he leaned against the table, his face getting paler by the heartbeat.

  I shook my head and started to pace. All the antimirrors stored in the house would either be sealed in glass or wrapped up tight in antistatic Gore-Tex, and therefore impossible to jump through. Removing their antistatic containers on the Obscura side of the mirror wouldn’t affect the mirrors on the living side. Think, Micheline. I pivoted and paced back, passing the island. We didn’t come this far to die now.

  As far as I could see, the warehouses were our only shot.

  “Micheline,” Jude said, his voice wound up in warning. A pod of eight girls streaked across the wide lawns toward the house, their limbs dead white against the darkness. They trumpeted their hunting calls, no doubt calling their sisters to their aid.

  “Hide in the basement, go.” I let Ryder lean on me as we limped out of the kitchen and into the hall. He needed help navigating the basement stairs, his breath sounding more labored with every inhalation. Jude secured the basement door behind us, strapping his knife holster around the knob and buckling it around the stairs’ guardrail. It would buy us precious seconds, no more.

  Ryder and I lurched over to a dusty chair, much like the one we’d tied Kennedy to.…

  Kennedy! An idea hit me like an electric shock. I helped Ryder sit, my eyes already on the sealed antimirrors on the walls. The basement on the other side was darkened, but I could still see Captain Kennedy’s form reflected on the other side, his head bowed, eyes closed.

  The cries broke into the house upstairs. Floorboards groaned under the girls’ weight. Jude backed away from the stairs, his rifle trained on the door above.