I saw Sara and called her name, running toward her, pushing people out of my way so I could get to her. She didn’t turn around. I reached her and grabbed her arm, turned her to face me. She stared into space.
Lifting my pistol, I fired a stream of the war water right into her face. Her eyeliner smeared as a blackened trickle ran down along her nose. She didn’t even lift a hand. I whirled around, searching the crowd. There was Joe, and Cherry. They were entranced too. Their hooded, distant eyes looked through and past me as if I weren’t there.
I heard a noise from the woods and braced myself to run. But it was the wild fae, the few who’d helped us, bursting out of the tree line guerrilla-style to ambush a few of the nearest bogeys. They battled, destroyed a few, fled back to their cover. I wondered how long they’d been at it. I noticed that the rest of the bogeys didn’t swarm them when they attacked.
Something held them in check. They were waiting for a signal, a direction, a command.
My gaze drifted up, beyond the fire, to the tiers of the wooden temple. The ziggurat’s surfaces glowed orange from the firelight, the doorways and carvings vacant and black. And Murmur stood alone atop it.
I moved before I knew what I was doing. All I knew was that if I could stop him, even stall him long enough, I could end this. The field between me and the ziggurat seemed endless as I pushed my way across it. Heat rolled out from the fire as I neared the temple, suffocating to breathe, roasting against my flushed and sweaty skin. I was so thirsty; my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My hands shook and my legs felt weak.
I entered the bed sheet labyrinth around the structure and tried to just push the sheets aside, but they’d all been staked into the ground. I picked a direction and hurried through it, darting past all the art, past spirals of colored dye, abstract shapes, words in fragments and in blocks, past goddesses with hair that streamed into cosmic creation and monsters that coiled into the shape of human hearts.
At the end of it, an archway tied with ragged prayer flags opened onto a wooden staircase leading up to the second level of the ziggurat. He would be able to see me there, ascending toward him. But he surely knew I was there anyway. I climbed the steps, my feet heavier with each one, and then went up from the second level to the third.
From the roof of the second level, a ladder led to the roof of the third and final level. It was shaky and cheap, a folding aluminum painting ladder tied to the wall with clothesline laced through steel eyes that had been screwed into one of the support beams. I clung to it as I tested each rung, afraid it would pull out of the wall and pitch me right off the side. “Safety third,” mocked the Sharpie writing along the edges of the roof as I reached the top. I was all too aware of how graceless and unlike an action hero I looked in that moment, crawling up from the last rung of the ladder on my belly.
Murmur turned to watch me, silvery flickers rolling in the void where he no longer kept up any pretense of a face. He wore shimmering darkness like a carapace and its edges were indistinct, black buzzing motes. I came up beside him and he turned back to his survey. We stood, side by side, looking out over the fields of Morph and the throngs of people and monsters pulsing with movement around the huge glowing fire.
“What are you waiting for?” I said at last. It was curiosity, not a challenge.
“You.”
“Why?”
“So that you could see.” He swept his gloved hand out over the sprawling view, and a droplet fell from its hem. “Look at the scope of it, all laid out right here. I want you to understand that this is nothing to me.”
I nodded. “Like setting fire to an ant hill.”
“But it is an entire world to you.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
“It’s late in this fight for a bluff.” He sounded irritated. I realized I could physically hear him. He was stronger here now than he had been.
“I’m not bluffing,” I said. “You just wouldn’t be able to understand why I care about stopping you.”
“I gave you a chance to prevent this. To be allies instead of enemies. More than once, even.”
I had to laugh. “Did you really think I’d jump on that offer?”
“Now my offer is an invitation to stand here with me and watch the destruction you chose not to prevent.”
“If this is nothing to you,” I said, “and it’s so meaningless, then why bother?”
“I told you that you had made this worse for everyone with your interference.” His voice crackled, angry, thunder warning of a storm.
It plucked a string of memory and I shrank from him. “So this is just to punish me? You waited here for me, waited to make sure you could see the look on my face when you give the order for your monsters to attack. Yet you’re still holding back.”
Night breeze, tinged with a chill, blew between us and carried tiny abyssal fragments from him, little shreds of void, like ash. “Yes. There’s one last thing to do before my horde is unleashed.” He turned to face me, looming. “Give yourself to me.”
I stared at him. “You asked me before. I said no.”
“I’m not asking this time.” He advanced.
“No chance in hell.” I tried to hold my ground.
“Throw away that key. Forsake your oath. Yield to me for the last time.”
“Why would I?” But this time I took a step back. “I got free of you.”
“Did you?” He looked out over the field below us. “Perhaps your new friends aren’t that important to you yet--or are they? Perhaps they’ll even survive the night, although I promise you I will make it hard for them. If they do, can you protect them from their dreams when I walk there? From my voice, whispering in their souls, making them come to me as you once did?”
“Stop it. Stop it. I’ll tell them to fight you. They know you too well now.”
He turned to me, moved another step closer. “But does everyone else? All the other people you’ve loved? Parents, old friends, will you find them in time to warn them? You think you need only survive this weekend. But I am patient. And I have eternity.”
Suzanne. The gray-blue walls of the mental hospital. Huddling in my bed, eyes squeezed shut, heels of my hands pressed so hard to my ears. The searing ache in my gut, night after night. “I can’t.” I whispered it, backing up, my eyes stinging with tears.
His voice grew soothing, gentle. “It doesn’t need to be painful this time. You can control that. Yield to me here, now, and you can have a good life. Live as long as you desire, untroubled by want. I will require so little of you. And when I claim you at the end, you will be a prize possession. A trophy. I do not need to do any of this tonight, this fight. I do not need to make you suffer. Belong to me, and peace begins tonight.”
He drew closer. The buzzing filled my ears, dark motes swirling around me in a vile embrace. Ozone prickled in my nose.
What if I did it? He was right, on my own I couldn’t save everyone I loved from him. I’d poisoned their lives with my presence enough. Could I be so selfish that I wouldn’t give myself to save them now? What did my stupid, pitiful, failed life matter anyway?
He nodded. “You’re right. What greatness do you think you’re saving yourself for? This would be your finest act.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad this time. Maybe if I didn’t fight back, maybe if I listened, if he got what he wanted, maybe it would be all right.
Another shift closer. The void surrounded me. “I would protect you. No one could keep you safer.”
He pulled off his glove. The hand beneath it was wet, red, raw meat and bone and blood. My hand closed on my key. I smelled smoke and roses, just a whiff. “And Vivi?” I said. “You’ll leave her alone too?”
“Of course.” But he’d paused. He reached out to cup my face in that awful hand.
“Liar.” I flinched away and fury boiled in me. “I will never give in to
you.”
“So be it.” He flared up, huge, the buzzing around him deepening into a thunderous roar.
I stumbled back from him and there was no more roof beneath me.
There was a moment where I was frozen in space, arms outstretched, and then a blur and panic and disorientation and fear. An explosion of pain, and I dropped into murky darkness.
It was like I dreamed, but it was chaotic and frantic, explosive bright fragments at hyper speed playing on top of each other. I jerked and tried to open my eyes, but it was a long upward struggle. When I did, my bleary, confused gaze took a minute to clear. Grass under me. Dark shapes looming beside me. The stairs of the temple. I was on the ground.
I pushed myself upright with trembling arms and looked up. The demon was gone. I flexed my fingers and toes as I crawled up to my hands and knees and tried to stand. It hurt--a lot. Yet nothing seemed broken; I must have hit the roof of the lower level and rolled off of it. My forehead and cheek throbbed raw, one arm and thigh burned with pain, and I was dizzy. My stomach lurched and I bent over, leaning against the stairs, but managed only a couple of dry heaves.
Stumbling as I limped on my bruised thigh, I pushed back through the labyrinth. I could hear the sounds of fighting. No, no, no, no...that single word looped through my shaken brain as I hurried and staggered, arms flailing out to the side and punching into sheets. I needed more time. I couldn’t fail, not like this, not when we were so close.
As I reached the end of the maze, the glow of the fire behind the sheets made shadows grow and stretch and turn grotesque. I grasped the pole at the entrance to hold myself up as my leg buckled, sending a deep ache shooting up my side.
There were drum beats, low and thunderous and high and tinny alike, coming from somewhere beyond the fire, clashing against the fainter sounds of DJ music with an insistent rhythm. The entranced people moved along with it, heads nodding heavily, arms swinging loose, skin shining orange with sweat in the firelight. And the bogeys oozed and slithered and rose up among them, wrapping a long pale arm across a torso here, splaying thick fingers across a face there. Horrible things, pressing loathsome bodies against human ones and sinking to the ground or crashing into each other. They pried open mouths or eyelids and squeezed, writhing their slow way within, pushing their essences down into the crowns of heads as their pale jellied skins collapsed and melted.
When those people got back up, their faces were alert again, hollow and vicious, with ugly eyes. They were clumsy, perhaps unused to the sheer weight of a body, stumbling and creeping, falling and surging. They snarled and drooled and lashed out with grasping fingers.
I plunged into the chaos.
Remembering my water pistol, I found it still tucked in my waistband, but it was wet and a drip fell onto my foot. It was cracked. I fired it around me and shoved and ducked and shook myself free of fingers that scratched my arms and shoulders and caught in my hair. I heard myself making weird noises--something between dry sobs and keening and yelps and mumbling my incoherent thoughts aloud. I tried to just focus on getting back across the field. I couldn’t do anything here. I had to get out of this crowd, get to the edges, find bogeys to get their grave stones before they all found hosts. If I failed, it would be a long and bloody night, and dawn would break over a silent camp strewn with abandoned bodies and burning tents, a desolate graveyard ruled over by the Hungry Man. My legs surged with adrenaline.
Somewhere beneath the drumming, there was a high-pitched noise like light rain on a tin roof, a nattering rapid sound wound through with a painful whine. I popped my ears and shook my head, but it persisted. The low drums seemed louder, vibrating in my small bones. I felt like I was slowing, like I was moving underwater. The whine grew more intense. It filled my head, slowly, and my vision grew hazy at the edges.
I had stopped moving. When had that--? I shook my head and rubbed my ears. Thinking was such an effort. What was I supposed to be doing? It felt like I could just nod off where I stood, and I wanted to. The whine and the drums seemed very far away now. I wasn’t sure if I was still in the field. I turned in place, slow-motion, and it felt good when my arms swung around me.
Then some tiny resilient part of me flared up in resistance and reminded me what Dionne had said to do. I began yelling, half-shrieking really. There was something about it grounding me, and the inner rebel said to move and not give in. Yelling hurt my dry throat. I needed water so badly. But the thirst and the rawness when I swallowed pulled at my attention and gave me something to focus on. I pressed the heels of my hands to my ears as hard as I could and shrilled, barked, babbled as I barreled onward.
It was like fighting off sleep. The world kept fading into white noise and then I’d jolt back into clamor and pain and realize I’d slowed to a halt and start running--well, loping with a heavy limp, anyway--once again. It felt like years were passing in this struggle to hold onto myself. I didn’t know where I was or even if I was running in the right direction anymore.
I saw a few people begin to stir from the trance without being invaded, and I ran toward them. They were panicking, slow, stumbling. A young woman, barely more than a teenager. A tall, solidly-built guy with a beard. Someone with long hair whose face was obscured by a Venetian mask with its veil hanging ripped. I grabbed their hands and pulled them. “Run with me. Just hang on and run and keep making noise and don’t stop.” We snaked across the field, howling and screaming.
The showers. I herded them inside the fence. “Go, go, go! Under the shower heads.” They collided with each other and the wall. I turned on both taps full blast and my charges yelped and tried to push out from under the water as it hit us all, cold and sharp. I grabbed their shirts, hauling them back. “No! Stay under the water!”
It was brutally cold, now that the night around us had cooled. I had to force myself to stay in the stream of the water too. But it was working. The fog was rolling out of my brain and my limbs didn’t feel so heavy.
The girl looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time just now. “Your face is bleeding.”
I touched the raw spots and watched the shower dissolve the blood on my fingers. “It’s just the skin. I’ll be okay. Do you guys feel clear-headed now?”
The bearded guy turned back and forth, eyes wild. “What the hell was that? What’s going on? I was in my tent. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“Me neither,” said Carnival Mask.
“Some folks are fucking with people,” I said. That was close enough to the truth. “Listen, you need to do what I tell you. Go up the path toward the back of camp. Free Radicals will be on your right. Go sit in the center of their camp, okay? If you see anyone else who seems normal, get them to hang out with you there. Don’t leave. If you start to space out again, plug your ears and make all the noise you can. Okay? Just don’t go anywhere until I tell you to go, or someone else says Mari said it was okay to go. Got that?”
“I’m really freaking out,” said Beardy.
“It’s going to be okay.” Gods, I hoped so. “It won’t be for long. Maybe an hour or two. Everything’s going to be fine and you’ll be safe if you just stay there, okay?”
Thank all the gods, they didn’t argue and let me send them on their way. I turned off the taps and leaned back against the wet wall, breathing hard. Three people, out of two thousand. There were so many out there. And Joe and Sara and Cherry were under the sirins’ spell. I needed to find them before they got hurt or possessed, to get them back so they could help with the ritual. I needed to gather the stones. The wild fae were helping, but they could only do so much. And as soon as the bogeys got used to piloting their host bodies around, everyone was going to be in even worse danger.
The yurt. I needed to see if Tamar and Dionne were there yet, and if they could tell me what to do. Maybe they could help me get Joe and Cherry and Sara out of danger, and then I could just get the stones as quick as possible.
/> I left the safety of the showers and ran out into the night.
The yurt was dark and empty.
I cursed. At least Chris’s show was over, but if Tamar and Dionne weren’t even here yet--I shook it off. No point worrying about that when I was just going to pull them away anyway.
Back on the path, I limped toward Free Radicals. I hoped there’d be enough of me left to scrape off the pavement when it came time to do the ritual. By now the path was empty and the camps around me were lonely and quiet, abandoned. I tried to form some kind of strategy for keeping things from going to hell.
I registered the snarl a moment too late. I was on the ground, pinned under someone strong. They smelled like sulfur and saltpeter.
It was the nain rouge, his sharp teeth bared as he growled at me. I kicked and punched and tried to shove him off. His body was so dense, his weight crushing. His eyes burned like coals. “I should have killed you at the wards, conne trahison.” He had his machete in one hand and with the other pushed my chin up to expose my neck. “Let’s see how you lie when your words drown in your throat.”
I screamed, but my jaws were forced shut under his grip and it was muffled. I grabbed his knife arm in both my hands, wrestling the blade away. He was so much stronger than I was. Bucking and struggling, I scraped the heels of my boots into the packed dirt to try to get any leverage. The blade’s edge gleamed hot and orange, so close to my face. My teeth ground together as I tried to wrest my head free.
And then in an instant the suffocating weight was gone and my head snapped to one side. I blinked, struggling to parse the sight of the nain rouge skidding away from me on his side. A large, shaggy creature with curving ram’s horns and powerful huge fists loped gorilla-style after him. Boden, in his human guise, dropped to one knee beside me. “Are you injured?”
I let him help me sit up and shook my head. Two more fae creatures, slender and quick with tough skin like bark, darted past and went after the nain rouge as well. “Thank you. Thank you.”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 39