“The window,” Camilla said and headed for the stairs again, toward the dark cellar where they’d originally come into the manor. Libitina followed, but the window was too high for them to reach. She thought if she could get Camilla to stand on her shoulders, they might be able to manage it.
“Get on,” she said as she laced her fingers together and crouched with her legs wide using her hands like a stirrup.
“No. I can’t.” Camilla looked up at the window.
“Yes you can, just go.”
“No. I can’t leave you here. Let’s try the lever upstairs again. I won’t be able to pull myself up anyway.”
Libitina looked around the room. Had the window been this high up when they came in? She didn’t think so. And there was nothing around her to stack to bring them closer to their exit. Frustrated, she stomped her foot and growled. “Fuck!” She ran back up the stairs. The spirits in the depths of the manor were growing louder, their screaming more insistent. Somehow their whispering was more persistent than their screams, as if they whispered right at her shoulder.
Heart pounding, she pushed on the lever again. “Fuck!” she yelled again. “Move, damn you!” She still couldn’t make it budge.
And then she realized what she should have realized from the start. For the first time in her life, she fully believed she had a purpose, like the spirit guide had said, though it wasn’t the purpose he’d meant in sending her here. It was her duty, her destiny to stop the ritual and to make sure Camilla got out of the manor more or less alive. It wasn’t her destiny to live through this. She smiled. Finally she could rest, then. It would all be over.
“Camilla,” she said and motioned for the walking dead woman to come to her. She looked into the torn face and wanted to cry. How had she come to love such a face? To care so much about this monster in front of her?
“Yes,” Camilla said, as if in a daze.
“You have to go.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“You have to, or everything I’ve done has been for nothing. Go through the bars. I know you can.” She pushed Camilla to the bars, but Camilla resisted.
“But how are you going to get out?”
“That’s just it,” she whispered. “Go. I’ll keep trying to pull the lever, but you have to leave now.”
Camilla nodded. Libitina knew she would obey and smiled. Her job here was done. Camilla’s body turned ethereal and passed through the bars, and then she was outside, in the night. Libitina could feel the wind on her face from the outside, wanted to go sleep in the forest. But she would be sleeping soon enough. And that was all that mattered here.
“Go open the door,” Camilla said to Libitina and pointed to the lever. “Open it. Come with me.”
“Okay. I’ll be right behind you,” she said indicating for Camilla to leave. She ran over to the lever and began pulling again. There might still be a chance. Her mind clamored that there wasn’t but she wasn’t going to give up so easily.
* * *
Hardly able to draw a breath, her muscles feeling like water, Aludra managed to stand behind the High Priestess just as she was bringing the chalice to her lips. Knowing this was the last chance she’d have to end it, knowing if she didn’t act now her strength would give out on her, she did what she meant to do in the first place.
Aludra brought up the dagger and in a movement too quick for anyone to notice until it was too late, she sliced the High Priestess’s throat just as the chalice touched her bottom lip, just as she was ready to drink the last of the ritual blood from the sacrificial child. My blood, Aludra thought as she collapsed back to the ground watching the High Priestess sputter and gurgle her last breaths.
Crimson spurted into the chalice to mix with Aludra’s blood. The chalice tumbled from the High Priestess’s hands and hit the altar, a ruby spray flying from the cup, the droplets catching the light from the flickering flames around the room. She reached for her throat, the shocked look on her face enough to please Aludra deeply.
Then the world exploded, engulfing the room in fire and pain. The orb, Aludra thought as she died. She didn’t feel the heat or the pain of dying. But she did see the orb blow up, saw the spirits trapped within.
Then the world was gone.
* * *
The blood, no, it can’t be mixed. Can’t mix the blood. The spirit trapped in the High Priest’s flesh tried to escape one last time when it saw Aludra drag the blade across the High Priestess’s throat. Before it could blink, flame surrounded it. Its body turned black. Pain. Never had it experienced anything like it.
It screamed as the body died, as the flames consumed the flesh, the muscle, and left the bone. Finally, the body died. It had had no idea a body could endure so much before death.
Free, at last. But its spirit form carried the scars from the fire. It would find Rory. It would have revenge. It traveled out of the manor. There was another entry to the spirit world. It had to get back, had to plan, had to find another for its order. Nine hundred years would pass before he could join Rory again. It had nothing but time, now. It had all eternity to make this work, if it needed.
From a distance in the sky, it watched the manor, all its efforts, burn. But it could rebuild.
* * *
Rory walked in the darkness, cave walls surrounding it. The explosion buffeted it from the back, smashing it into a large rock it couldn’t see. Trapped. The cave behind it collapsed. Panicked, Rory went ethereal to pass through the rock, to travel outside. After a moment, Rory realized it would become stuck in the earth, encased forever in the mountainside if it didn’t turn back the way it had come.
Too risky to pass through the walls. Something passed by it with a scream of rage and pain. The other spirit, the one possessing the High Priest of the Order, was gone. So it wasn’t over. But Rory knew it could continue on if only it could find a way out.
It didn’t know how long it would be stuck in the mountain but knew a way out would come soon. It would endure. It would continue its quest to avenge all the angry spirits of men wronged.
Soon a time would come when it roamed outside again. And soon, it knew, maybe too soon, it would have to face Satan again.
* * *
Libitina yanked on the lever. Stuck for good. Deep inside she knew death had come for her at last. She stopped trying to pull the lever and ran to the bars, thinking it would be nice to watch Camilla walk away, to see her accomplishment one last time.
“What are you still doing here?” she asked when she saw Camilla still standing at the doorway, staring in.
“I just…”
“Run! Get the fuck out of here!” Her voice hit Camilla like a slap.
Camilla turned, still too slow, but at least she was moving, and descending the steps leading away from the manor, toward the forest, to safety. She had no idea what was going to happen, but she knew the further away Camilla was from the manor, the more likely she would successfully escape.
Libitina let go of the bars, her arms relaxed at her sides, a grin on her face.
“I did good,” she said to herself. “For once, I did good. Hell, I think I saved the whole damn world.” A booming rumble shook the manor and the mountain with it. Plaster and dust fell. The force of the explosion hit her back, slamming her into the bars, breaking her nose. She hardly had time to feel this, to register that her nose was broken. A disjointed thought, this will make me look so pretty, crossed her mind and then flames sank their teeth into her flesh. The manor fell apart around her.
* * *
In a great wave of heat, Camilla flew through the air. She felt her skin grow taught around her muscles, felt a hint of pain. She hit the ground and slid, her skin peeling back like an overcooked turkey’s. Her right cheekbone and shoulder bone ripped free of the skin. She stood, shook herself, straightened her neck in a slow pop. The tattered flesh on her face was stiff, black in places. It crackled as she grimaced. One small clump of hair remained at the front of her singed scalp, hanging over
her forehead, but the rest of her head was bald.
She turned back to the manor and watched it burn. In the distance, high in the sky, she thought she saw the shape of one bright spirit hovering, also watching, but then it, too, was gone. She headed back to the forest, sensing Rory’s other half trapped in the mountainside, glad there wasn’t a way for her to get at him because she knew she would go to him if she could, would destroy herself in his kiss.
No. She needed to be strong. Rory couldn’t continue after her. Of this she was sure. The male half was weak in the decaying body it now inhabited. If it didn’t find another body soon, she knew Rory would be trapped in that flesh.
Camilla grinned, the skin on her upper lip breaking open, sending a rivulet of goo down her chin, dripping on her charred breasts. It would be sweet taking the breaths, but when Rory was done with her body, she would find a way to hold on.
It ended with her. She would never pass the spirit to another. Would never give up this life. In the end, she would rather bury herself in the earth and live eternity with Rory raging inside her while she rotted in the ground than be responsible for another woman suffering this violation, this possession.
Camilla faced the forest, faced her destiny and lurched onward, into her new future and the eternity of horrors that awaited her.
Women Scorned Page 24