by Susan Vaught
“You can do that?” I gripped the ax a little tighter. “Snatch a soul out of a living thing and make it die?”
“Eff Leer’s a shade, not a living thing,” Levi said. “Without the tree, we can bust him up for good and all.”
That felt like a hedge to me. I was pretty sure Levi could kill things by grabbing their soul or spirit or energy or whatever. No wonder my grandmothers didn’t want him to touch me. But that was stuff to worry about later, if I lived to worry about anything at all.
“Okay, then.” I raised my ax in front of me like a talisman and started walking toward the hole in the Rec Hall wall. “Let’s go finish this job.”
Chapter Eighteen
We tore away the police tape and walked into the tunnels together, Levi on the left, Forest in the middle, and me on the right. Dogs appeared from nowhere and fell in behind us.
It was dark, but Levi’s skin gave off a silvery light that glittered against the ax blades and lit our way. It was cold at first, then hot, then unnaturally hot, like we were walking straight into hell. The air smelled like bitter copper and dirt and wood.
My eyes darted all around the tunnels, searching for any movement or any hint of roots. Did they know we were coming?
The bricks on the tunnel walls seemed to stretch closer to us.
Down we went, silently, no jabbering about plans that would never work or strategies that wouldn’t help.
The space in the tunnel got smaller. Another few steps, and I bumped shoulders with Forest. Levi had to go in front, with Forest following and me bringing up the rear.
Rustling sounds echoed through the tunnel behind us, and I whipped around, ax raised, ready for anything. Goose-like shadows tracked along the glowing brick walls, knifing forward, as quiet as the dogs. The hair on my arms prickled. I felt hunted.
“Darius,” Forest whispered, and I realized I wasn’t moving. I didn’t want to keep my back turned on those dogs, especially Cain. Something about them reminded me of the tree roots, like they were bloodthirsty, deadly extensions of something powerful, and weren’t to be trusted.
“Darius,” Forest said again, and I made myself turn toward her and Levi. The world went squishy and wavy, like it wasn’t solid anymore. My thorn pendant seemed to flare, then burned against my skin.
I touched the wood through the fabric of my shirt. “They know we’re here.”
Levi lifted his ax in a salute toward the darkness in the section of tunnel ahead of us. “And we know they’re here.”
That’s when the music started, rusty and creaky and teasing. “Pop Goes the Weasel,” slow-like and distorted and totally wrong.
The dogs behind me snarled. I snarled with them. Levi started walking again. Forest and I followed.
The brick floors and walls seemed even closer now. We were getting toward the end of the tunnel, where the chamber entrance would be, and I said so to Levi and Forest. Then I saw the snake shadows.
“Roots!” I yelled as one dropped out of the ceiling. It whipped around Forest’s neck, jerking tight, and she dropped her ax and grabbed for the root.
My heart skipped. I raised my own ax, but Levi moved so fast he was nothing but a black-and-silver blur. His ax whistled through the hot air and cleaved the root in one blow. The part choking Forest went limp and fell away from her. The other half snapped back into the ceiling like a live wire, spraying blackish gore as it went. Droplets spattered across my face and arms, each one burning like boiling water.
I tried not to holler from the searing pain, but I couldn’t help it. The sound came out like a squeal, and Forest cried out, too. Levi pointed his finger at me and mumbled something. My skin stopped burning, and I used my shirt to wipe the rest of the stuff off my face and arms as fast as I could.
Slithering, crackling noises filled the tunnel. “Pop Goes the Weasel” got louder as the monkey chased the weasel. I squinted into the darkness as the dogs behind me yipped and whined and the geese started honking and screeching and flapping, and Forest said something loud and pounced on her ax, and I saw why.
It wasn’t one root coming for us this time. It was dozens.
They burst out of the shadows like a snake army, writhing across the bricks to get at us. I swore and swung my ax at the nearest bit of gnarled wood as it tried to stab my ankle. The blade barely bit into the wood and jammed immediately.
From somewhere, my grandfather started laughing.
“Son of a—” I stomped my foot against the wiggling root and tried to pull the ax free, but it held tight. Cain pounced on my root and the other dogs jumped on others, snapping their teeth into the wood and shaking the roots like rabbits. Goose shadows covered the roots still attached to the walls, and Levi whirled by me, swinging his ax over his head in big, wide strokes.
Forest was having trouble like me, striking at roots and then having to pry out the ax blade. The hounds helped, keeping the roots busy as we worked. Then I couldn’t hear anything but that stupid ice-cream truck song and barking and yelping and honking and chopping and disgusting spurting noises from the roots when we did manage to cut through them.
Levi and I never looked at each other, but our goals seemed to be the same—keep all that nasty wood off the girl, and keep walking. He took the front and I took the back, and Forest only had to worry about what got past us. Which was less and less as we got the hang of it.
My skin started burning again, but Levi made it stop with that fog from his fingers. I squinted so none of the goo could get at my eyeballs and chopped and pulled, chopped and pulled, chopped and pulled. Soon the burning in my shoulders had nothing to do with gore, and I started to laugh so crazily that my grandfather shut up.
“Bring it!” I shouted. “We can do this all day!”
Maybe we were cutting down the tree’s energy a little. Maybe we were killing it by inches. I didn’t care, just as long as I was hurting it, and through it, Eff Leer.
“Pop Goes the Weasel” cut off abruptly, and the roots that weren’t already confetti or dog food snapped against the brick walls as they withdrew.
I listened to my own heavy breathing in the sudden silence that followed. The tree’s blood glowed black all around us. My own blood raced from what felt like a victory, but Levi still had his ax raised, and so did Forest, and so did I. The air felt hotter and smelled bitter. The earth under the bricks at our feet seemed to bubble and seethe, and sharp claws of fear dug at my chest.
My grandfather had been toying with us, as playful as ancient serial killers ever got.
Now he was pissed, and the corrupted earth under the control of the dark druid was reacting to his rage. The tunnel floor started to buckle.
“Move,” Levi yelled. “Now!”
Chapter Nineteen
I ran and jumped and fell as the earth tore itself to pieces all around me. Heat blasted out of glowing rents in the ground. Nowhere to go but straight ahead. Pain seared my feet, and I thought my shoes were melting. I hit my knees in a tooth-crunching thump, then scrambled toward the spot at the tunnel’s end where I remembered finding the basement the first time I came down this hole.
So hot. Hard to breathe. I didn’t know brick could turn to water—or was it blood? Molten blood. I was going to melt right into it or go up like a fizzling skin torch. The stink of burned hair crowded into my nose. Dogs howled and screamed. Geese screeched. I thought I heard Levi shouting, and Forest, too, but I couldn’t tell if they were ahead of me or behind me. Blazing curtains of heat turned everything orange and red.
When I couldn’t walk, I crawled.
Sweat poured down my face and stung my eyes but I kept crawling, banging the blade of the ax each time my right fist smacked the bubbling earth. The ground was trying to suck me down. If it pulled me under, I’d get crushed, or my face and bones would turn to liquid. My heart pounded hard enough to burst.
Fire coated the brick walls on either side of me, biting at my arms. The light drove a solid curtain of bugs ahead of it. They swarmed over the tunnel�
��s end, then cooked with horrible hisses and crackles, pelting my face and shoulders as they died.
My arms and legs ached as I shoved myself forward, bashing into burning dirt and pieces of brick as I tried to find the spot, the place where the tunnel turned into an old rotten basement under the asylum. Fire blasted up from the earth in gouts and geysers. This was hell, and I was going to burn.
“Darius!” Forest called to me, but I didn’t stop.
“This way!” I hollered as I smashed my shoulder into more hot brick, hitting the tunnel’s wall like a rabid bull. Again. Again. The opening had to be here. Smoke made me choke and cough, and tears turned my vision yellow. I smashed the wall again and my skin tingled, and I pitched forward so hard the ax went flying as I smashed into wood and dirt, rolling three or four times until I hit something solid and cracked my jaw against—
A pair of legs.
Black tuxedo pants.
My chest caught fire. Not my skin—the thorn pendant. I grabbed it as I looked up. Through my wet, blurry vision, I saw my grandfather standing in the basement, bathed in red light from his witch tree.
He looked tall. His elbows and remaining wrist and fingers looked huge at the joints, and that face—I wanted to look away from the ruin of it, but I didn’t dare. Behind him stood the tree, huge and vicious, with its bloody eye and big mouth and grabby branches covered in giant thorns and sick-smelling white flowers.
Smoke rose off my skin, drifting up to the place where the tree’s crown reached the basement’s rotten ceiling. Blisters covered my legs and forearms and cheeks, and I wanted to yell from the pain, and because I was down here in hell alone, Forest and Levi had probably already burned to death.
I wasn’t going to do any better than Grandma Betty did against these monsters. Worst of all, I had lied to my mother. I wouldn’t be coming back.
“Get up,” Eff Lear told me in a voice icy enough to put out a thousand fires. He kicked me hard in the back, driving out my breath. “Die on your feet like a man.”
I hauled myself away from him, jerking as my muscles screamed against that kick. I was crawling on hands and knees like a terrified baby, and I didn’t care. I kept right on crawling until I got to the ax I had dropped. I snatched it off the ground and stood, holding it in front of me in both hands. My breath wheezed out between my blistered lips, and I had to squint to see through the sweat and blood running into my eyes.
Eff Leer and the tree were about ten feet from me now—too far to swing at, too close to run away.
“Who did you bring with you tonight?” My grandfather scented the air and licked his lips. “I smell blood.”
I stood there with the ax, wishing I had the guts to start swinging.
My grandfather stretched out his one whole arm. The knobby fingers seemed skeletal, and they cast giant shadows on the far chamber wall.
Something cracked.
I jumped, almost dropping the ax, but locked my elbows to hold it still.
Levi walked past me, holding his weapon at his side.
My grandfather lowered his arm. “You think you can do what your grandmother couldn’t, boy?” He smiled without any humor at all. “Try it.”
Was he talking to Levi or me? Both of our grandmothers had tangled with him and lost.
And where was Forest?
My eyes darted right, then left. I didn’t want to give her away if she was hiding, but what if I let her burn in the tunnels? She had called out for me, and I kept crawling away. What kind of worthless piece of crap was I?
My skin was so singed I was sure it was peeling off me. Tears ran down my face, but I kept my ax raised. Cain and the dogs and geese that seemed to follow Levi were nowhere to be found.
“Efnisien Leer,” Levi said. His voice made the red light in the basement flicker. “You and that witch tree are done. Come peaceful, or come in pieces. Your call.”
Levi lifted his ax. From the side, his pale face seemed longer and more set, his expression all business. The red droplets under his eye sparkled like real blood.
The laugh that came out of my grandfather curdled my insides. His hand shot out, and Levi’s ax twitched. My own ax tried to jump out of my grip, and I staggered sideways, trying to keep hold of it. The chamber rumbled, and the scratchy-scrabbling sound of thorny wood snaking across stone made me turn in circles, swinging out with my weapon in case roots were coming after me.
They weren’t.
They were circling the chamber walls, stacking themselves one on top of the other, thick and thorny and dense.
No escape now.
“Levi,” I said, but he didn’t answer.
Two of the roots shot toward the back of the chamber. I heard shouts and screams coming from far away but getting closer fast, and then the roots whipped back into view.
Oh God. No.
Everything inside me withered.
Trina and Jessie.
Roots twisted around them, holding them as they hit at the wood and yelled and tried to jerk themselves free.
They must have come after me when I left the hospital and gotten to the tunnels, and now—
No, no, no!
“Levi!” When I turned back to him, he and my grandfather were circling each other. Levi struck with a quick swing of his ax.
My grandfather dodged away from the blow. “You don’t have the bitch’s power, boy. Give it up.”
Levi swung again.
My grandfather sniffed like he was smelling the blood he was about to spill, and his eyes widened. He stopped circling Levi and backed toward the tree. His head swiveled left and right. “You found a new one,” he murmured. “A young one. Where is she?”
He spun toward the corner of the chamber, toward the entrance, and I realized Forest had to be hiding right about in that very spot.
Levi bared his teeth and lunged, brandishing the ax in a wild blur.
My grandfather stumbled.
Branches tore away from the walls to help him, and I charged the roots holding Trina and Jessie. When my blade struck wood, it was like hitting solid stone. Sparks flared. My wrists wrenched as the hilt tore out of my grip. My ax skittered across the rotten floor toward Levi and my grandfather.
Trina let out a scream that shredded my heart.
“Coming, baby.” I jumped for the ax. A branch caught it before I ever got near, and in a whirl of leaves and rotten white flowers, the ax came barreling toward my face. I dodged sideways and smacked into the tree’s thorny base, just below its eyeball.
Its mouth opened. Moss-wrapped teeth ripped across my gut and snagged the waist of my jeans, jerking me off my feet.
The tree held me there in its mouth, upside down and kicking and hollering. Every part of me felt torn in half. Then I saw Trina and Jessie get lifted off the floor, too. They dangled from the roots about fifteen feet away from me, limp like dolls. Their faces had gone slack, mouths open, eyes shut.
Terror froze my pain and my blisters and my brain, and I couldn’t think at all.
The branches dropped my ax and grabbed my legs, wadding me up so the witch tree could eat me. I kicked harder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my grandfather smash Levi in the face with his knobby fist and drop him like a prizefighter.
Then the tree turned me, and all I saw were wooden teeth and thorns and that big, nasty bloodshot eyeball rolling and rolling. I screamed and punched bark with one fist. It was going to eat me, and then it would eat Jessie and Trina. I couldn’t stop it.
I grabbed the thorn pendant and tore it off my neck. It was just a thorn, burning and black like the tree itself. I couldn’t stop it, but I could hurt the tree and give the others a chance.
I smashed the curved tip forward, ripping into the fleshy eyeball.
The thorn exploded in my palm. Gore blew out of the eye like a hot storm of acid, gushing into my face and chest and throwing me backward, turning everything to fire and misery and darkness. It kept coming, everything in that tree, hot blood spewing like a fountain that might never
run dry.
The branches dropped me, and I smashed to the floor as the tree bellowed and shrieked. The whole chamber rocked. The floor shuddered and collapsed. I smelled burning wood and skin and hair—my skin, my hair. I screamed with the tree, rolling around but still burning to death anyway. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t think of anything but Trina and Jessie, and Levi and Forest. I listened for their screams, but all I could hear was the inferno, then my grandfather’s raging shout and the sound of his footsteps as he came for me.
“What did you do?” he growled. Then, louder and completely unhinged, “What have you done?”
His fingers dug into my cooking throat, and I knew he was choking me. He was killing me. I was dead, already in darkness, and—
“He’s not yours.” My grandma Betty’s voice whispered through the universe. For two seconds, I felt her. For another two, I smelled her, all powdery and soft like when I hugged her. “He’ll never be yours.”
My grandfather snarled.
Something whistled through the air. There was a wet crunch, followed by a thunk. I didn’t have to be able to see to know my grandfather had finally lost what was left of his head.
“That’s better,” Grandma Leslie said. “You been working on your aim, Betty?”
Something like cool lips brushed across my cheek, first one pair, then another. Then Grandma Leslie said, “Wake up, Levi. Take care of my grandson like you promised—and take care of my girl Forest, too.”
Way off in the distance, bells started ringing.
Cool air circled around my fried skin and the rips in my belly, easing the pain, as dogs barked and geese honked and a tree screamed. I thought I saw Levi and Cain dragging something black and glittery into a dark hole so deep it had to lead right out of this world.
A few seconds later, the pain got so bad I truly lost my mind.
Levi—
Forest, we’ve got to get them out of here—
Nothing.
Puking.
Screaming.
Heal him. I’ll help you.