by Susan Vaught
Or is he just going to keep it simple and cook and eat her?
I wanted to throw up.
The mountain man’s skin seemed to glow in the moonlight just before clouds rushed across the sky, and his painted face split into a grin as he raised a tomahawk and aimed it at my head.
I barely dodged in time. Before I could move, he threw another. This one hit my chest blunt side first, stealing my breath and knocking me backward.
That hurt! Could dead people feel pain like this?
Out of habit, I drew on my power and eased the pain enough to gasp some air, and cold energy surged through my veins. So I did still have some abilities. On instinct, I rolled left, and a tomahawk buried itself in the dirt beside my head. I rolled again, this time getting to my feet and pulling my knife.
Lincoln’s bells rang, the sound vibrating in my teeth.
Big Harpe roared. He yanked two more tomahawks from his leather belt and charged at me.
I ran at him, drawing my knife back for a plunge.
Shadows lurched around me, and I used my power to push them back. It didn’t work. I stumbled and fell sideways out of Big Harpe’s range as he charged past and kept on running. I only fell for a second, but when I got up, I realized the shadows were those weak shades, doing Harpe’s bidding. Two larger shades rushed out of the trees to jump me, and wind started to blow. Seconds later, lightning cleaved the sky and thunder rumbled.
Rain exploded over the clearing as though the two bigger shades had brought it with them as they sprinted toward me, and Big Harpe was already turning to charge at me again. Dread spread through my muscles like extra weight. Lincoln’s bells tolled above the storm, booming between peals of thunder, echoing around cracks of lightning.
Go, I told myself, focusing on Big Harpe and ignoring the new shades. If I could take him down, Forest would be okay. Go. Go!
I pulled my knife back and ran at him again. Shadows leaped at me, shades dressed in buckskin with painted faces and wild eyes, biting and clawing. Big Harpe was coming. He would split my skull with a tomahawk before I even got close.
Teeth sank into my ankle, then tore away as the first of the tall shadows pounced. Not on me. On the weak shades. A dark, muscled arm slashed at the shade that had bitten me.
Lightning flashed and daggers glinted. I thought I saw a reflection off dark sunglasses.
“Darius?” I called out. “Addie?”
No one answered.
The shades fell away in the driving rain, lost in the chaos of the storm.
Big Harpe roared a blood-freezing battle cry.
Knife in ready position, I limped toward him, closing the distance faster and faster.
Forest, I’m coming. I wished she would wake up and run. If she got herself off that burning altar, I’d throw down my knife and let Big Harpe chase me through the woods while she got away.
He let out a bull’s bellow and swung a tomahawk at my head. I pulled up short and ducked under it. His arm swung wide. He almost lost his grip on the second tomahawk.
Almost.
He got his balance and swung at me again. His arms were longer than they had been, and he was moving a lot faster. I had to leap back to avoid taking the blow in my face. As soon as my feet hit the ground, my bitten ankle gave. I rolled away as Big Harpe thumped past me.
Before he could turn around, I was up again, circling him. He stopped and glared at me. Then he shook his head like he was trying not to hear something. Uncertainty flickered across his features.
Lincoln’s bells kept ringing in the storm. Could he hear them?
A jagged fork of lightning lit the clearing, and I felt the bell tower watching. Could Big Harpe sense that, too? The old asylum wanted death. It was waiting for blood. I wasn’t even sure it cared whose.
Could I die again here? Could he?
I was going to find out.
Big Harpe took a swipe at me with his last tomahawk, and the blade opened a gash from my shoulder to my neck. I barely felt the pain, but blood poured down my chest. Drawing power instantly got harder. Sweat broke across my forehead and ran into my eyes with the rain. I kept my knife high and focused on Harpe’s midsection. He would move again, and this time, I wouldn’t be distracted.
His right hip twitched, hinting at his next move, and I lunged under his swinging tomahawk. My knife struck him below the left side of his rib cage and sank deep, drawing a roar as I leaped backward out of his reach.
“Stop talking,” he snarled as he swung at me a second time and then a third, each attack going wild.
Who was talking? I hadn’t said a word. Did he mean the bells? Or—
Harpe’s eyes flashed, full of the madness I had seen every night I walked through Lincoln looking for spirits.
“Shut your mouth!” He jumped at me, his tomahawk cutting my leg before I could react.
Whose voice was he hearing?
I tried to lead his swings, to move myself between him and Forest, but at the second I would have cut off his access, Harpe dodged around me and jumped toward the altar.
I charged after him, but he caught me with a backswing of the tomahawk’s handle. The wooden hilt drove into my gut, snapping ribs and crushing out my air. My knife went flying. I tumbled sideways, smashing into a pine tree, and my vision went dark. The world went too quiet, and I couldn’t hear the bells anymore.
For a few seconds, I could do nothing but gasp for air, but then I dug my fingers into the dirt and shoved myself to my feet. Darkness still swam across my vision, and I had to double over. Letting out a choked yell, I made myself stand, reaching for power, drawing all I could from the darkness of the other side. Cold anger filled me, my vision improved, and the agony in my ribs eased enough for me to stand straight again.
Not fifteen feet away from me, Big Harpe stood over Forest, his tomahawk raised.
Forest lay completely still, oblivious to the doom above her.
Chapter Forty-Three
Ice formed on my heart, and I didn’t try to get my knife.
“Don’t,” I told Harpe. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just name it.”
“Get on your knees,” he growled.
Simple enough. I dropped to the ground. My eyes wouldn’t leave Forest, or the few inches between the tomahawk and the faint but steady pulse in her throat. “Whatever you want,” I repeated. “Just turn her loose.”
Harpe’s whisker-covered lips curled into a sneer. “That won’t be happening. I need her blood. If I take it into me, I can do what she does.”
My insides lurched. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“So you say.” Harpe’s pupils dilated, and he shook his head. “What?”
I didn’t know what to say, because I couldn’t hear what he was hearing.
His expression darkened, and his next growl came out so low and guttural that the hair on the back of my neck prickled at the sound. “Leave me be!”
I didn’t think he was talking to me.
The tomahawk over Forest’s throat twitched. Harpe stared past me, then at me. “Make them leave,” he demanded.
I swallowed. This wouldn’t go well, but I had no choice but to ask, “Who?”
“Them!” Harpe shouted, gesturing to a spot over my shoulder.
“My children never give me peace!”
He’s hearing the voices of the babies he killed. I didn’t think he was hearing actual ghosts. The voices were in his head. My eyes stayed on the sharp edge of the tomahawk as he slowly lowered it to rest against Forest’s neck.
He stared at that spot over my shoulder.
“Leave me be!” Harpe shouted again. “I’ll kill the lot of you!”
I thought about telling him he already had but realized there was no reasoning with insanity.
Harpe mumbled to himself under his breath, then shouted something unintelligible at his imaginary kids. I kept myself motionless and reached out with my mind like I did at Lincoln to sense spirits. There was so much coldness here. So much darkness. I had t
o find a way to send it where I wanted it to go.
The storm around us suddenly cleared, and moonlight poured through the pine trees again. Behind Big Harpe, an all too familiar shape came into view. Lincoln Psychiatric’s bell tower showed itself again, windows blazing with white light.
The light danced through the clearing, and Harpe flinched away from it. His gaze fixed on me, and he screamed, “I’ve eaten witches for dinner. Your tricks don’t work on me!”
He drew his tomahawk across Forest’s shoulder.
“No!” I lunged forward, reaching for her.
Forest moaned as blood streamed onto her arm. Big Harpe grabbed the collar of her blouse and yanked her off the altar, away from me. Then he held her like a rag doll as she bled. Droplets struck her jeans and then the ground as I forced myself to stop trying to get to her. Harpe had figured out how to control her, how to hurt her and kill her without ever touching her skin and being burned by the power of her bracelet.
Rage coursed through me at the sight of her dangling helplessly in his huge fist. I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t speak. I barely heard his muttering because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that horrible sight.
Then, below Forest’s feet, grass sprouted and unfurled. My mouth fell open. Did I really see that? Yes! And there again—grass, and flowers poking up, too, blooming in the night. Yellow ones and red ones and even a few white petals, too.
Every place her blood struck the ground, life appeared.
The light from Lincoln’s bell tower focused on her, appearing to pour into her, feeding the golden glow rising off her skin.
Imogene!
A fierce ache throbbed in my heart. My grandmother didn’t have energy like that to give. She was using herself up to save Forest.
Big Harpe stared at the new plants coating the ground. Then he lifted Forest and opened his mouth wide, like he meant to bite off her face.
Forest seemed to draw strength from the life breaking out beneath her. Her lids fluttered, then lifted. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes, and when they fell onto Harpe’s face, he screamed from the pain of the holes they burned.
Forest looked from Harpe to me, then whispered, “My mother said darkness needs light.”
Darkness needs light? What did that mean? As if in answer, the bell tower’s beam shifted from Forest to me.
“And light needs darkness,” Forest said, her words sputtering out even as Harpe got himself together and made to bite her again.
She reached up and touched Harpe’s face with both hands, and his skin started to sizzle. He shrieked and tried to throw her down, but she gripped the sides of his head and didn’t let go. I ran forward, not caring how badly I got burned if I could only tear her free. I had to jump to reach Harpe’s arms, and when I grabbed hold, my fingers closed around Forest’s bracelet.
Energy tore through my body, all the dark and cold I had touched on the other side. We fell free, rolling together across the clearing until we hit a pine tree. I jumped to my feet and pulled Forest with me, not caring about the fire she ignited across my hands.
“Watch out for Harpe,” I said to her as she yanked loose from my grip to keep from hurting me. “He’s behind you.”
We turned and saw him sagging against his collapsing altar, holding his head and screaming.
“His face,” Forest said, and I realized what she meant.
Most of Harpe’s chin and cheeks were missing.
Forest looked at her bracelet, then at me. The beam from Lincoln Psychiatric’s bell tower fell squarely on Harpe, and he screamed that much louder.
The bells rang.
We started toward him. He didn’t even try to run. He never saw us coming.
When we reached him, Forest raised the arm with her bracelet and made a fist. After one last glance at me, she closed her eyes. Then she reached as high as she could and punched Harpe in the gut.
Her golden light expanded, and her hand blazed right through his flesh.
Harpe roared, but before he could move, I reached up and clasped my fingers around the rowan and iron. At the same time, I reached out and touched the darkness and the coldness again, feeling the energy of death itself flowing through the other side. Grinding my teeth, I willed it through my burning fingertips.
It rushed outward, stronger than any blast of lightning. Black fire seemed to come from everywhere at once, but Forest stood beside me, unhurt. Her light joined with my darkness, and my darkness joined with her light.
I screamed with Harpe as we burned, my hand and his gut, then his legs, chest, and shoulders. Flames burst from his eyes and poured out of his ears and mouth. His hair caught like kindling and flared.
He fell away from us, his screams turning to the roar of flames as his corpse went up in smoke and his essence broke into bits of dark energy. His gray ashes littered the grass and flowers grown so recently by Forest’s blood, and then the ash disappeared as the grass seemed to turn greener.
Big Harpe was gone. I could feel it. No remnant of his spirit remained at all. We wouldn’t have to deal with him trying to come back, not ever again. I had had no idea the dead could die, that spirits could be completely destroyed. I wondered if Imogene knew that.
Probably not.
She’d have a lot to write down in her books.
My fingers smoked, and when I let go of Forest’s bracelet and looked at the skin of my hand and arm, it was crisp and black and ruined. I was beyond pain, beyond screaming, beyond caring. Forest was with me, alive and safe.
I swayed, light-headed, but I smiled at her.
She smiled back.
Chapter Forty-Four
Forest kept looking at me and smiling as she raised her fingers, dipped them into the blood on her wounded shoulder, and brushed some of the red liquid across my devastated hand. Cool relief rushed up my fingers and washed across my wrist, then traveled all the way to my elbow. Like the grass, new flesh grew straight out of the ash, forming into the skin I had always known.
Maybe I wasn’t as dead as I had thought.
“Thank you,” I whispered, flexing my healed fingers.
“You’re welcome.” Forest’s golden light filled the wrecked clearing as her shoulder wound closed before my eyes. My ankle mended itself in the next few seconds, and my ribs, too. Just being close to Forest healed me completely.
“You’re good at using the energy of death to work with spirits and travel back and forth to the other side,” Forest said. “Imogene and I, we use the energy of life. Darkness and light. I guess my poor mother had a vision of the future, but she was too disturbed to understand what it meant.”
We stood together, inches apart, so close I could feel the heat rising off her skin.
Would it kill me to kiss her?
Probably.
Would it be worth it?
Definitely.
She raised a finger to my mouth and almost—almost—touched my lips. “Think of it this way. If we work together, we’ll be really hard to beat, now that we know what we can do.”
“Forest!” a woman called from somewhere in the pine trees.
Forest laughed as she lowered her hand. “That’s Addie.”
Another voice shouted, and I knew it was Darius.
I had to struggle not to grab Forest’s hand and hold it as we turned toward the trees to see them coming. Both of them looked okay, though they had torn their shirts to bandage various cuts on their limbs. When they reached us, Darius bent over and put his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. After a few seconds he looked up and said, “Levi, this place sucks. Can we go home now?”
“You can, I think, if Forest makes a thin spot. But I can’t. I died again when Trina blew me up.”
Darius’s eyebrows lifted above the rims of his glasses. “You must have pissed her off really, really bad.”
“I accidentally killed her father,” I said.
“Dude.” Darius looked confused. “The pastor was already dead.”
I shrugged
. “Long story.”
“Can you take us home, child?” Addie asked Forest.
“Yes,” she said. “And pretty close to the moment we left. I’ve gotten better at the when of things, but the where ... that could get a little dicey.” Then she pointed at the distant bell tower. “What should I do with that?”
“Leave it,” I told her. “Lincoln makes its own choices.”
They went through the thin spot Forest had created one at a time, Addie first, then Darius. When Forest stepped aside for me to go next, I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
I thought about Imogene, and how her bringing me back from the other side had started her long decline to nothing. “I died in the human world. That’s how I crossed to the other side to help you. It’s not right for me to go back. If you take me, it could hurt you.”
“Silly.” She smiled at me and moved into the thin spot, pulling me by the belt loops on my jeans. “You’re Imogene’s grandson. Death’s afraid of you.”
I didn’t have time to argue with her, because in the next second, we stepped into the records room of Tower Cottage on the campus of Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital. I sucked in a breath at the shock of coming back from the dead—again—and blinked at the walls around me.
The dull plaster and old paint looked normal enough. Darius and Forest seemed to be themselves, and Addie, too. The room hadn’t changed since I saw it last, with its ledgers and files and books, but Imogene wasn’t there.
No ...
Trina was sitting at her desk, motionless. She had bandages wrapped around both hands and wrists, and she was gaping at Darius, Addie, Forest, and me as we lined up in front of her.
“Good to see you, baby,” Darius said.
Trina stood.
I moved back, and Darius laughed.
I expected Trina to run to Darius or her stepmother, but she charged at me. I threw up my hands to ward her off, but she wrapped her arms around me, buried her face in my neck, and sobbed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t—I never thought I’d see any of you again.”
Forest gave me a get-with-the-program look, and I hugged Trina. Maybe a little stiffly, but I did it. “It’s no big deal.” I waited for Forest’s nod, and when she gave it to me, I managed to get myself out of the tangle of Trina’s arms and point at her bandages. “What happened to your wrists?”