by Alex Gordon
Lauren nodded. “Eliza Mullin.”
“Eliza.” Blaine’s eyes clouded for a moment. Then his gaze returned to Lauren, and cleared. “But you will do. You will do quite well, for some time to come.”
“You. Bastard.” Jorie hurtled toward Blaine, hands extended, fingers bent like claws.
When the woman came within arm’s reach, Blaine stood, grabbed her jaw with one hand and the back of her head with the other, and twisted. The gravel grind of snapping bone sounded, and Jorie collapsed in a heap, a puppet with the strings cut.
“Always so noisy. Why can’t caged birds ever learn to stop singing?” Blaine stepped over Jorie’s body. “It’s just the two of us now, as it always seems to be. I’ve enjoyed our talks. I always meant to tell you. Mullins have always provided the most entertaining challenge.”
Lauren stared at Jorie Cateman’s body. Gone so fast. So many, gone so fast. “You killed a woman in Seattle to get my attention.”
“I needed to get you to leave.” Blaine shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did.” Lauren nodded. Sensed the man’s impatience, the chafing of his bonds. “Wards fade after the one who sets them dies. Spells. I’m the last Mullin. Why don’t you just kill me and wait it out?”
Blaine frowned. “Such a question.” He gestured around the room with the studied ease of an experienced actor. “Sweet Eliza sacrificed her life to bind me to this place. The power of voluntary sacrifice lasts so long. It’s the ultimate gift after all. To give up your life for piles of dirt—”
“Gideon is more than land. It’s people—”
“I was talking about the people.” Blaine sighed, then looked around the room as though he wondered how he had come to be there and when he could leave. “I don’t need to make a deal because you’re here, alone, with no means of escape. But I am nothing if not generous.” He walked toward her. “Tell me what you want.”
Lauren tried to scoot along the wall as he approached. The shovel had flown across the room, but it had struck the wall at an angle and rebounded toward her. Just a few feet away. She edged closer. Just a few—
“You’re afraid, I can tell. You want to take me on, but you’re nowhere close to ready.” Blaine crouched, rested his chin on his fist, The Thinker in worn flannel and denim, with eyes as dead as a shark’s for all their beauty. “But I think Matthew did me a favor, leaving you unformed. I can shape you in my image, make you useful to me.” He snapped his fingers. “In exchange, I will give you the world. Quid pro quo.”
Lauren slid a bit closer to the shovel, then stopped as buzzing sounded in her ears. She wanted to stop fighting. She wanted to say yes.
“I can teach you all the things your father couldn’t, or wouldn’t.” Blaine edged closer, grazed her hand with his fingers. Pulled back, then closed in again. “I already know what you feel like, thanks to the accommodating Mr. Corey. What you taste like. The sort of touches you crave. After you release me, I will tumble you on the floor like a dollar whore. And you will beg me never to stop.”
Lauren felt Blaine’s breath on her cheek, smelled the faint hints of cinnamon and caramel from the pie, flavors that he couldn’t taste. She put a hand to his face and felt the roughness of beard and beneath that the ridges of his scars. “I have to touch you.”
“Do with me as you will. Mistress.” Blaine embraced her and pulled her to her feet and they moved in a lazy circle, a slow dance, as she stroked his hair and pressed her hands to his chest and felt for memory that survived in each cell. Memories of death and life in the wilderness. Pleasure and pain.
And in the nucleus of each, like the cores of infinitesimal stars, the memory of fire.
Lauren felt it, sparks that stung her fingers and radiated along her arms like shocks. It must have shown in her face, this discovery, because Blaine’s arms tightened about her and his eyes widened and their dance slowed, then stopped.
“You know how?” His voice, rough as a whisper in the night. “I can tell. You know how.”
“I need—I need—” Lauren broke out of his grasp and pushed him away, then—
—dove for the shovel and swung it. The edge of the blade caught Blaine as he leaped forward, slashing his shirt and the skin beneath. Blood sprayed and he staggered, caught himself on the edge of the table.
“You bitch.” He stumbled toward her, slipped on his own blood, righted himself.
Lauren staggered back as Blaine shoved her. She struck the wall, and slid along it as he came for her. She reached for the door, but he caught her as she put her hand on the latch. As he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, she shoved her knee into his groin and he had enough flesh and nerve about him that he felt it.
“Kill you.” Blaine howled as he staggered after her, stumbled to one knee. “Every second of pain you bring me, I will return a thousandfold.”
Lauren flung open the door just as he reached her, shook off his fumbling grasp. Sprinted across the yard, past Corey’s body, through the weird snow. Prayed that Blaine would be hampered by age and injury and pain.
But he righted himself and ran for her, low to the ground at first and scuttling as no human had run since the dawn of time. “Storm.” More shriek than voice, a howl under moonlight.
Lauren felt the first gusts, then the blast like a gale as wind wrapped around her and held her like chains, sent snow in tornadoes about the yard, ripped away shutters and tore branches off trees and sent them all swirling to form an infernal cage.
But a gap remained in the tornado wall. Just large enough. Lauren pushed through it and ran up the back steps of the Cateman house.
Memories of fire. Like the gazebo. There was wood in the house that remembered.
She knew where she had to go.
Just as she opened the back door, the howling winds ceased. Blaine’s voice sounded.
“Stumble, stagger, and still.”
Lauren shot through the back door into the house just as the spell struck. Her legs went to lead and she fell to her knees, fought the ice that webbed through her limbs, regained her footing just as Blaine grabbed her by the collar and spun her, pushed her into the wall opposite.
“I will pull—your words out of you—with tongs gone white with heat.” He sagged against the wall, what breath he could pull in with his still-weakened body wheezing into his lungs. “The pain your father suffered when he denied me—will pale by comparison.”
Lauren found the strength in her arms to push herself upright, to stand. She concentrated, focused, laved away Blaine’s spell like dirt from her skin. I am stronger. She gripped the thought, held it like a safety line in white water. I am stronger. She took one step, another and another, until she ran. Through the stinking dark to the stairs, up and up and up, Blaine screaming after her.
As she mounted the third flight, the air rippled, the stench of death like a wave of foul water. The remains of Leaf Cateman met her at the top, rotted arms reaching for her. She barreled into him, tried to push him off balance, but he had been strong in life and just enough of that power remained.
Help. Lauren punched and kicked. Bandages and cursed flesh fell away from Cateman’s arms until only sinewy muscle and bone remained. Skeletal hands gripped her throat. Anyone out there. If you can hear me. Anyone?
Anything?
“Now.” Blaine came up from behind, pressed his face to hers. “Let us begin again.” Sweat glistened, and blisters had formed on his forehead. “Let us—” He stopped. Turned, and looked back down the stair.
The corpse emerged from the dark, a sere shamble that pushed Blaine aside, grabbed Cateman’s wrists, and wrenched them apart. Cateman’s hands tore loose and he staggered, then toppled down the stairs.
Eyeless sockets settled on Lauren. The body from the cellars, the pleading voice like the click of beetle’s wings. “Help me, too.” Then it collapsed against Blaine, slowed him just enough.
The doors to Cateman’s office glistened black in the half-light, a gaping maw. Lauren rea
ched them and flung them open just as Blaine caught her—he pushed her inside, pulled the doors shut after him.
Lauren’s lungs burned, thigh muscles twitched and cramped as Blaine’s spell fought her every move. She worked to her hands and knees as he grabbed her from behind, dragged her upright, crooked his arm around her neck. “I will squeeze the words out of you, one by one, and the last will be the last thing you ever say.” He whispered in her ear. “And then I will call you back, and we will play this game again, over and over and over—”
Lauren stomped down on Blaine’s instep, shoved her elbow into his stomach—his grip loosened just enough, and she pushed against him, drove him back. He bounced off the painted wall, slid across the drawings made by a young man so many years before, then slumped down, sweat coating him like rain and the stink of smoke rising from his clothes.
Lauren leaned against the wall opposite, and pulled in one gasping breath. Another.
Blaine fought to stand, heels scraping against the floor. “I will bring him back, your Dylan Corey. I will set him on you like a bull, and your screams will be as music.” He laughed, a high-pitched, manic chortle. “Give me a child for its first seven years, and I will give you the witch. I’ve always been fond of children. Eager little sponges.” He struck the floor with his fist, eyes sharpening, then dulling, as the pain took hold. “It would have me as teacher, whatever you birthed. And you to practice on. And you—”
A sharp knock sounded. Lauren and Blaine both looked toward the door as it opened.
“We heard you call, child.” The battered form of Dilys Martin stepped into the room. The cellar corpse followed, dragging a twisted leg. “We witches, we hear forever. We answer the call.” She closed the door, then turned to look at Blaine, and her smile turned into something from a nightmare. “I know you. I saw you before I died. In the road. In the rain.”
“Go back where I sent you.” Blaine sidestepped her. “Go back.” But Dilys moved in a flicker of light, took hold of Blaine’s left arm, and held him while the cellar corpse took hold of the right.
“Hang on to him, Tom,” Dilys said to the corpse. “He’s a slippery one.” She looked back at Lauren. “Have you met Mr. Barton, child? He knew your father well.”
“Dilys?” Lauren dragged in breath after breath through an aching throat into searing lungs. “You’ll burn.”
“We’re ready, child.” Dilys nodded. “Say the words.”
Lauren pressed against the wood panels, ran her hands over them, felt the burn marks, the scars of long-ago flames. “Do you know what this is?”
Blaine struggled in his captors’ grasp. “It’s wood, you stupid bitch.”
“What kind of wood?”
Blaine stilled. It mattered, but he didn’t know why, and the realization gave flower to the first hint of uncertainty. “From the Great Fire.”
Lauren shook her head. “Something else burned before that.” She touched the wood panels again, more gently this time, fingertips reading the pound of hammers and the rasp of saws, releasing the scent of herbs and the prayers of men. “On the twentieth day of December in the year 1836.” She looked across the room at Blaine, the faint light that shone through the Lady’s eye the only illumination, coating the room with memories of ash. “You must remember. You were there.” Then she felt it. The heat, locked in every fiber, every cell.
“You’ll die, too.” Blaine’s voice, suddenly gentle, the murmur of a lover. “You can’t leave. You are the conduit. The fire only burns if you are there to release it.”
“I know.” Lauren lowered to the floor. Blaine’s spell had settled in her legs again. Or maybe it was fear, freezing her. Resignation, taking away her will to fight. “Let memory of fire burn you. Let air feed the flame.” This time, she found the words. The fire burst out around her hand and she flinched away, watched it lick around the room like a fuse toward the thing it had killed once, so many years before.
“What do you want?” Blaine tried to pull away from the shades that held him as the flame flickered across his chest. “What do you want? Tell me and you shall have it.”
“So many died trying to put you down. No more.” Lauren pressed against the wall even as it grew too hot to lean against—more fingers of flame licked around, a lacy web of yellow and white, crackling and hissing and whispering in its own language.
“You walk into the flame with me, witch?” Blaine coughed. The fire worked from within as well as without, smoke curling from his mouth like breath on a cold day. “I will wait for you in the wilderness.” His face had gone black and blistered, clothes charred away. “Tell me what you—”
Flame burst forth from the walls with a freight-train roar, cycloned upward. The oculus exploded and glass showered down, a rain that would never cool.
Lauren drew her knees to her chest, huddled as the heat grew, the flames filled the room. She watched Blaine burn, his flesh bubble and burst and his limbs contract. Watched the late Tom Barton die again, for real this time, his body no longer needed to fool anyone.
Then Dilys turned to her. The gentle smile. “Soon, child. It will be over soon.” Then even she was gone.
Lauren felt no pain. Was it the fear, deadening her? The scant remains of Blaine’s spell? Or had she died already, overcome by smoke that filled her lungs and swirled before her, her final partner on that last dance.
Lauren?
Lauren squinted through slitted eyes, saw the shape through the flame, walking toward her. The familiar outline. The voice. “Dad?”
The man who had called himself John Reardon, who had been born Matthew Mullin, stood over her. “I knew it would end like this, and I tried to stop it.”
“You should have told me.”
He crouched in front of her. “I know that now.” He wore work clothes, a denim shirt and khakis, and carried with him the scent of fresh-cut wood. He grew more solid as the seconds passed, as the flames filled in behind him like a movie backdrop.
“I can see you better now.” Lauren reached out, felt the cotton softness of old cloth. “I can touch you.”
“That’s because it’s almost time.” Mullin held out his hand. “It’s not hard. It doesn’t hurt. You can trust me on this. I speak from experience.” His eyes filled. “At least I can help you with this. I can be here for you like you were there for me.”
Lauren grasped his hand, fingers closing over skin and bone as real as any she had ever felt. Around her, the flames changed, from yellow-white to silver to something beyond color. She stood, the spell that had bound her legs as dead as the witch that had cast it.
They walked in silence, father and daughter, as Gideon unfurled before them, a ghost landscape. Questions formed in Lauren’s mind, all the things she had wanted to know when she lived.
“Yes, I did.”
Lauren looked at her father as she filtered all those questions, tried to figure out which one he had answered. “Yes, you did what?”
“Love your mother.”
“I shouldn’t have doubted.”
“I would have.” Matthew Mullin, child of Gideon, shook his head. “I would have hated me.”
“I could never hate you.”
“Cross your heart?”
“And hope to die.”
They both laughed at that. Then Lauren felt her smile fade. “You left them behind.”
It took some time for Mullin to find the words. “We were going to die together, Emma and I. Take care of Blaine once and for all. But I needed her. I didn’t have the strength to release the flames by myself. It was just supposed to be the two of us in the house, but when I got here, I saw Leaf and Amanda carrying something wrapped in a rug, and I panicked. I knew it was Emma and that they had killed her and that they would either kill me, too, or make sure I was blamed for her death.” He held out a pleading hand. “I tried to get Jimbo to come with me. Him and Connie.” He shrugged. “They did all right without me.”
“Not really.”
They walked in silence as ti
me passed in whatever increments mattered in the wilderness. Lauren recognized the blankscape, and wondered if Emma and Leaf were out there somewhere, settling their differences. She saw others, men and women in all manner of dress, standing at intervals, talking in groups, bowing their heads and touching their foreheads as she walked by.
Then Matthew Mullin stopped, and nodded to one of the older women. She stood off by herself, hands clasped before her, smiling softly. She wore old-time clothes, a long, dark skirt and matching shirt adorned with an embroidered lace collar, her white hair gathered in a net cap.
“I’ve been waiting here awhile, Matthew.” A soft voice, the barest hint of a drawl. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not your decision.” She drew up straight, and steel shone in her eyes. “It never was.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Matthew Mullin released Lauren’s hand, beckoned for her to step forward. “Good-bye, Lauren.”
“Dad—?” Lauren started after him. Then something gripped her, Blaine’s spell the merest touch in comparison, and she turned back to face the woman. “Mistress Mullin.”
Eliza Blaylock Mullin inclined her head. “Likewise.”
“I’m not sure about that.” Lauren stuffed her hands in her pockets, felt odd delight in the fact that she still could. “I let him get me.”
“Well, he got me, too.” Mullin beckoned, and together they walked along a path that formed before them as needed, lengthening with each step they took. “But I cleaned his goose, and you cooked it.” She smiled, and the years fell away. “It took some time. But one thing a good witch learns is how to wait.” She stopped and turned. Sighed. “There he stands, like a lost lamb.”
Lauren looked back, and saw her father sitting on a nearby slope, watching them.
“He fears what I am about to tell you.”
Lauren felt a jolt. She had already died. What could happen to make it worse? “What?”
“That this isn’t your time.” Eliza Mullin pointed toward the lighted horizon. “That there are greater dangers, and you’re the one who must meet them. This wilderness has many paths, many doorways, and not all of them are well guarded.”