by Lucia Ashta
I didn’t attribute the screams to Gertrude. They were powerful, although high-toned, and she was only an eleven-year-old girl. No, that wasn’t right. She’d been a girl the last time I saw her, in Norland and in human form, but many years had passed since then.
She’d be fifteen, only a year younger than I’d been when Father tried to marry me off to Winston. Could a fifteen-year-old girl make sounds like that? No, I didn’t think it was she. Besides, when I last saw her in Bundry, she was a cat. As unearthly as the screams were, I’d never heard a cat make a sound like that.
I ran as fast as I could, sliding and bumping into walls when I took corners too fast. Each stride brought me closer to the core of the castle.
Another scream echoed across walls. Why was no one else helping ? I couldn’t be the only one to try to spare this person, and certainly Marcelo and Mordecai wouldn’t stand by while anyone was being tortured. I ignored the sinking feeling in my stomach that came from the question that if Marcelo and Mordecai weren’t helping this person, why weren’t they?
I picked up the pace, so that now I darted like a startled rodent desperate to free itself of a trap. Only I was running toward a trap. A part of me should’ve grasped that by then.
As I ran, I noticed the castle was too silent. A home this size would have dozens of servants, constantly bustling through all levels to anticipate the needs of their master. The smells of food should overflow from the kitchens, yet when I sped passed it, with its telltale fire pits designed to cook for large numbers, it looked abandoned.
Something wasn’t right.
When another scream tore through the house, tearing through me as well, I ignored what nagged at me, and continued to run toward a trap. When I found stairs, I bound up them, taking the steps two and three at a time. I quickly discovered that these were the service stairs that led to the servants’ quarters, and I turned and ran down them.
I passed the kitchens again, heading in the opposite direction now. Again, the silence that permeated rooms that should be rustling with servants unnerved me. I took a different turn down the hallway past the kitchens, and I discovered another set of stairs. They began humbly, but became more opulent above the first landing. I powered up them and only stopped when I reached the ground floor.
I’d surfaced on the other side of the entry hall from the front door, at the end of a wide hallway that connected entryway, parlor, and dining room. I stopped for the first time since I entered the castle. Fifty feet across from where I stood was the imposing front door.
There was no one by the door. No Marcelo, no Mordecai, and no Sylvia. There was no one there to show me that I wasn’t all alone in this eerie castle, in which the silence was punctuated by alternating screams of suffering and a stillness a home this size shouldn’t possess. I’d never felt more on my own than I did right then.
I stood for a moment longer than I should have. The doubt, the fear and the sense of helplessness began to slither inside me. When another scream rang through the castle, this time hoarser, the fear moved more quickly within me than it had just a breath before.
I did the only thing I could do then. I began moving again. If I moved fast enough, then the fear wouldn’t take hold in me. It needed stillness and retrospection to root. I wouldn’t give it that.
I spotted a grander staircase, this one sculpted with elegant balustrades and polished railings, which gleamed even in the poor light. I tore across the entry hall to get to it, sliding only once on an ornamental rug. I looked down as I slid, and was rewarded with the unpleasant image of a boar being hunted. A spear and a knife already impaled its body, yet it continued to flee, leaving a trail of blood.
Hunts didn’t usually end well for the prey. I kept moving to quell the knowledge that I was the prey in this hunt. The Count of Washur, murderer of loved ones and many more unknowns, was the hunter in this depraved game. And I was the prey.
There was another scream, and I amended my thoughts. I was the Count’s prey, but I wasn’t the only prey. My friends and I were the mice, and he was the cat. And he wanted to play before he killed us.
Chapter 38
I knew I’d found the room I was looking for before I entered it. I slowed to a walk outside its entrance to catch my breath. I didn’t know what I’d find when I rounded the doorway, and breathing heavily wouldn’t help me defend myself or anyone else. I doubled back, padding as softly as I could down and up the hallway until my breath normalized.
Not wanting to test my courage, I walked straight into the room. It was easier to be brave when you didn’t consider the risks of your actions.
Though the room was large, I didn’t need to traverse it to realize I wouldn’t find what I’d hoped. Everything was terribly quiet, as if I were the first to walk across it in centuries. I padded across it just as carefully as I had in the hallway, yet my footsteps still echoed. There was nothing in the room to muffle the sounds. It was nothing more than a great and vast emptiness that threatened to invade my bones.
My eyes welled, and I fought the tears back. I didn’t know whom I wanted to cry for—Was it for Gertrude or Marcelo? Was it for Mordecai or Sylvia? Was it for myself?—but what I did know was that I could have drowned in tears.
I left the room without looking out of those large windows that I would have otherwise enjoyed, if they’d only been in another house. I couldn’t have known that if I’d looked out of any of those windows, I would have spotted something moving across the horizon toward us.
There was only one approaching Washur, tearing across the landscape like a blur on horseback. I wouldn’t have recognized the rider with the long, red hair, even if I’d been able to make out the person’s face across the distance that spanned too far for detail.
Still, the details would have been enough to make me wonder. The similarities were too great to dismiss.
I left the room, unsure of where to go. I padded slowly down the hall, waiting for the next scream. I wished that scream would never come, but I needed it. Without it, I had no direction, and I’d be left to wander the castle until I remembered that I had my own power. And perhaps it was exactly what I should’ve done.
But the next scream arrived punctually. I determined that wherever the scream emanated from, it wasn’t on this floor. I moved to the stairs again, and hesitated. The stairs continued upward. Had the scream come from above or below? I prepared to wait for my answer, but this next scream was worse than all the rest. It was more violent, the strangled and dying gasp of someone who wished to be dead already.
And it was definitely coming from above.
I grabbed the railing with so much force that my knuckles turned white. I took the stairs one precise step at a time. There was no need to hurry because now I knew, beyond any doubt, that whatever I needed to face would be waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
I moved upward as if in a dream, still unaware that I was trapped within the Count’s illusions.
Chapter 39
When Marcelo pushed Clara out the front door, he never intended to shut it behind her. In fact, he planned on drawing Mordecai outside the door right after her. It was for that reason that Marcelo was turned toward the old magician looking back and it was also why he saw what was coming at them just in time to do something about it.
Marcelo had never seen something like the black cloud heading their way, but he knew what it was. He’d heard of the spell that would create a flying army, even though he hadn’t studied it. He was beginning to realize that most of the Count’s magic came from the forbidden book, The Magyke of the Darke Elementes.
The book wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. The magical council assumed that the spells the book contained would disappear when it forbade the book. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Instead it had encouraged those who desired power at any cost to search for the forbidden book. In reality, dark magic was still practiced by a determined few, while the rest of magicians were ill prepared to defend against it.
This par
ticular swarm appeared to consist of bats, although Marcelo didn’t intend on waiting for them to get closer to be certain. The first of the swarm had already rounded the hallway and reached the opposite end of the entry hall.
Marcelo’s hand was still on the ornate handle of the front door. He gripped the brass, with its twisted design, and slammed the front door shut—hard. At least, he thought, he could save me.
Mordecai was turning toward the flapping and squeaking sounds when Marcelo yelled “Get down. Now.”
Marcelo lunged for the sleeve of Mordecai’s cloak with one hand, and pulled his mentor down with him. Pressed into the floor, Marcelo tilted his gaze up, lifted his other hand, and brought his split and Sylvia down to the floor fast and hard.
Salazar and Winston got the message and lunged toward the floor too. Once they got there, they covered their heads and tried to disappear into the parquet.
Then Marcelo began mumbling a spell as fast as he could. After Mordecai looked over his shoulder, he too began to speak a spell, a different one than Marcelo. Their survival depended on whether or not they could finish their spells in time.
The swarm, black and menacing just as it was intended to be, narrowed the distance between them. Soon, the bats would reach the crumpled forms of Marcelo’s split and Sylvia. But Marcelo didn’t look toward his other half; he concentrated on the proper enunciation of each word that fell from his lips. Even one small error, a small mispronunciation, would be all it took to frustrate his spell and allow the bats to kill them all.
Marcelo knew these weren’t real bats. The cloud of flying black was a manifestation of the dark power of the Count. The Count had given shape to his power, and that shape mimicked the movements of bats. The creatures that flew toward them at surprising speed and with tenacious ferocity were not what they seemed to be.
They were even more dangerous.
Mordecai finished casting his spell with a second to spare. His spell was beginning to disintegrate the integrity of the swarm. The bats that brought up the rear of the pack were squealing as the impression of flesh tore from their bodies, ripping them from this dimensional world. As if an invisible fire had lighted the pack, it was tearing apart from the back to the front.
The forerunners were still a danger to them. Mordecai had cast his spell with perfect efficiency, but still he’d had too little time. His spell would decimate the bats, but it might not do so in time to spare their intended target.
Mordecai turned away from the bats and looked at the magician who was like a son to him. Everyone else Mordecai had loved in this life—his brother, his sister, his parents, his friends—had died. Marcelo was all he had left. If it was Mordecai’s time to go, well then he had lived a long life, and at least he wouldn’t have to bear the loss of a man who was like a son to him, and the only family left to him in this world.
Mordecai watched Marcelo’s lips as they incanted. He couldn’t distinguish every word Marcelo said, but he knew this particular spell from memory, although he was surprised that Marcelo did. It was uncommon to prepare for defense against forbidden spells.
Marcelo’s mouth moved with focused precision. When Marcelo, as a boy, had begged Mordecai to take him on as his apprentice, Mordecai had made Marcelo practice the proper enunciation of spells for months before he allowed him to cast a single one. The boy Marcelo had been fed up with this practice. Yet Mordecai doubted Marcelo had regretted it since then, and now all of their lives depended on this one skill.
They didn’t have time to enclose themselves in a space that could fully shut the bats out. And in the open like this, if the bats reached them, they would tear through their flesh. The bats carried the Count’s darkness like a disease, and it would infect and spread through them as surely as the black plague.
Mordecai held his breath. A bead of sweat began its slow descent from Marcelo’s hairline down his forehead. Marcelo didn’t flinch. His lips sped. He flicked his eyes to the disintegrating swarm, almost at his split.
He spoke faster, if that was even possible, allowing his mind to think of nothing more than the proper words he’d learned from memory, just by chance. Discovering the protection spell to the physical manifestation of darkness was the product of a curious mind that longed always to learn more, that yearned for books and the secrets they could share. Without this, he wouldn’t have accidentally discovered the protection spell, scribbled in Albacus’ hand in the margin of a book.
Unlike Marcelo, Mordecai had studied the forbidden book, just as the Count had, albeit for different reasons. Mordecai knew the counter spell that Marcelo didn’t since it was within a book that wasn’t supposed to survive. Yet were it not for Marcelo’s protection spell, then they would have all died before Mordecai’s counter spell had the opportunity to complete.
The bead of sweat rolled down Marcelo’s nose and hung, suspended, building strength, just as his spell did. In the precise instant that his lips formed the last of the words, the drop of sweat fell to the floor and splattered, making a significant mark on the wood despite its relative insignificance.
Marcelo’s spell also left its mark, and it began to form shields around everyone on the floor next to him. The shields were translucent, and they began from the bottom up.
Marcelo, Mordecai, Salazar, and Winston watched the shields’ progress, willing them to spread faster, knowing that nothing they thought or said would make that happen. All they could do was wait and see who won this race.
It was a close one.
The four men compressed their bodies into as small a shape as they could make it, attempting to minimize the surface area the shield had to enclose. It wouldn’t make much of a difference, but any difference could be the deciding factor between their life and a miserable death.
The shields were almost complete. Marcelo stared upward now, watching the shield’s translucent energy march toward the still-open seam. The shield slid one gradual inch at a time, but eventually, in what seemed like forever, it drew together, stitching in all the protection he needed from the dark force pummeling toward them.
Mordecai’s spell continued to work too, completing its mission with continual progress. The army of bats had diminished to one third of its original size, while Mordecai’s spell continued to incinerate them from the back forward. It was like a fire the bats couldn’t put out, that borrowed strength from the speed of their flight.
The bats would soon be consumed.
Marcelo and Mordecai, and even Salazar and Winston, now safe, turned to watch the two prostrate forms that hadn’t been able to make themselves smaller. Marcelo and Mordecai watched on a held breath and ever-widening eyes. Salazar and Winston watched with grim fascination.
It wasn’t clear which would happen first, only that one of the possibilities would happen soon: Would the shield around Sylvia and Marcelo’s split draw to a close? Or would the bats reach the firedrake and half of a man, both still unconscious, before then? Would Mordecai’s counter spell consume the bats before they could reach either Sylvia or Marcelo?
All four men held their breath, and even Salazar and Winston rooted for the preservation of a creature and half a man they would have killed at another time.
Sylvia’s body slumped in a heap when Marcelo flung her to the floor with his magic, in too much of a hurry to bring her down with care. However, despite the hard landing, this unplanned detail was what would save her. Her body was compressed enough that the shield crawled around her head just in time, separating life from death just by a second.
The forerunners of the bats, flying in desperation to outreach the counter spell that was destroying them from behind, in a combined fury of fulfilling the purpose the Count had created them to fulfill and from an innate sense of survival that all creatures possess, pummeled toward Sylvia and Marcelo’s split.
When they reached Sylvia, they dove toward her, knowing their opportunity to take her down with them might have passed already. It had, and they crashed against a shield that burned them up
from the inside, just as Mordecai’s spell reached them from behind.
The bats died a swift death, consumed by a light with an appetite for darkness. As death had its way with them, the bats melted into a mass of darkness without form. They dispersed into the formless energy from which they originated. The dark energy gave over to light, and then joined the air of the entry hall.
Marcelo’s split was not as lucky. When Marcelo released the spell he held over his split that held him hovering in the air for transport, his split fell fast. He bounced off the hard floor once, but then landed in a similar position as the one in which Marcelo had been carrying him. His prone body, arms hanging off to the sides and legs outstretched, mimicked the five-points of a starfish.
Of all of them there, Marcelo’s split was by far the most spread out. And that was enough to make the difference, that terrible difference no one wanted to make.
When the last of the bats, their wings beginning to flutter with micro-tears from the spell that chased them like hell fire, crashed into the shield that all but covered the body of Marcelo’s split, they incinerated in a quick burst. But there was one, just one single bat, which won the race.
The bat found the hole in the shield around Marcelo’s split and pulled its wings in tight to its body. It aimed for that one hole, which grew smaller with the passing milliseconds. The bat might not make it in time, but it might. In single-minded determination, it lunged and dove toward the closing entrance.
The bat crashed into Marcelo’s left arm at the precise moment as the shield closed around the split’s body.
The bat lay there, limp from the force of the impact, the last of its kind. It only had a moment to enjoy its victory before Mordecai’s spell, still in pursuit, reached through the shield and clutched the bat by the throat and forced all darkness from it. Mordecai’s spell yanked the bat back out of the now-complete shield and released it for transformation.