Somehow I grinned, and pride fluttered through me while I ducked under. Rules didn’t apply to him. People in this library knew who and what he was, and they obviously respected him. They must know he deserved respect for going after One and Two by himself with little to no training.
The elevator doors dinged open, and we stepped inside. Tram hit an unmarked white button, his eyebrows pinched together. When the doors closed, my stomach jolted at our sudden drop.
I took his hand again. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said with a shrug. “Books are for learning, for escape from real life. But…I smell them. The pages and who they used to be.”
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed each of his fingers. “I’m sorry. That must be horrible for you.”
A blush snuck up his cheeks. “What are you doing?”
“You can feel that?”
He slid a finger down my cheek, lighting me on fire. “Of course I can. You’re right here.”
“I’m sorry.” I stepped closer to him, my eyes never leaving his gold-specked olive ones. “For everything. I haven’t made your job any easier.”
“Leigh.” He brushed a thumb over my lips. “Don’t be sorry.”
The elevator doors opened into darkness.
I put a hand against his green sweatshirt, feeling the peaks and valleys of the muscles stretched over his pounding heart. “I can’t help—”
He crushed his mouth to mine and kissed me, slow and deep. The bells rang furiously. Heat trembled through me. I pressed myself against him and drank in the taste of earth and trees.
Three days. That was it. If I could spend it right here feeling Tram’s lips and tongue explore my own, I would. But I couldn’t. And neither could he.
The elevator dinged and began to close.
I kicked my leg out to stop the door and pulled away from him. The bells quieted.
“That was unexpected,” I gasped.
He sighed, his chest heaving like mine. “We need to focus.”
“Yeah.”
He took my hand, and we stepped into the darkness. Completely blind, I let him lead me around a corner and into a dimly lit room. Rows of high shelves stretched in both directions. A large aisle split the room in half, and on the other end, an old woman sat hunched over a desk.
She looked up and waved. “Our Trammeler is here.” Her voice creaked as though her throat had rusted. She curled the fingers of a withered hand, gesturing us forward. “Come here so I can see you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tram said.
Puffs of dust clouded the air with each step we took, and a layer of it coated my tongue as I breathed in. A moth flitted around inside the center aisle’s overhead light, its wings brushing against the glass. It bounced shadows on the shelves and intricately bound books.
We stopped next to a slanted shelf that seemed to have spilled its contents on the floor and stood in front of the old lady’s desk. Pale blue eyes twinkled from her kind and wrinkled face.
“You been makin’ those bells ring.” She reached a hand out to Tram, who grasped it with both of his. “From the looks of you, you’ve gone way past your three warnin’s.”
I shot a glare at Tram. “Do you know who did this to him?”
“I ‘spect it was the Counselor,” she said. “Been makin’ your life miserable, no doubt.”
The Counselor. Tram had mentioned him before. One and Two had escaped before the Counselor convicted them to the Core.
Anger flared in my gut. “So he can beat on you but he can’t do his job?”
Tram released the lady’s hand and squeezed the holy shit out of mine. “Please, Mrs. Star, we need your help. My—uh…Leigh was bitten by a spider, and we need to get the venom out.”
“Your Leigh, huh?” She turned her twinkling blue eyes on me. “You been helpin’ him ring the bells, hon?”
A slow burn spread up my cheeks, softening the edges of my anger, and I looked away.
“All righty. I’ll help because I can see she’s got a fire in her a mile deep.” She grinned and reached out to me.
I took her hand and held its wrinkles gently, like I would hold a frail butterfly.
“There’s a hawthorn branch an aisle to your right, Our Trammeler,” she said.
When he let go of my hand, needles pricked through my fingers while the blood rushed back in.
“Have a sit down, hon, and let me take a look.” Mrs. Star pointed to a chair in front of the desk.
I sat and rolled up my sleeve, her hand still in mine. She let out a whistle while she traced the three tattoo and the bite with a touch that felt more like a warm breeze.
“It’s interestin’,” she said, leaning back in her chair, her fingers resting on my wrist. “Our Trammeler could be chasin’ One and Two, but instead he brings you here.”
I stared at my lap where my stomach was sinking. “I made him take me here. It just seemed... necessary, in case something else horrible happens before...” Before the worst thing could happen.
“Oh, I get it, hon.” She nodded. “Not only do you make the Counselor’s bells ring, you make his bells ring. I see that very clear, and I ain’t seen nothin’ in five hundred years.”
“What?” I blinked, sorting through her words.
“Here’s the hawthorn branch.” Tram put it on the desk in front of Mrs. Star and pushed his lips together in a grim line. “I’m going to do some quick research over here, Leigh. You’re in safe hands.”
He brushed by the back of my chair and let his fingers drift through the ends of my hair. Moth shadows from the overhead light flitted all over his back.
“Mm-hm.” Mrs. Star gave me a secret smile then picked up the hawthorn branch. It was small and spindly, just like her. Thorns jutted out in all directions from its bark, about an inch long. Mrs. Star pressed her finger to each one, like she was testing their sharpness.
“Are you going to stab me with one of those?” I asked.
“Yep. And it’ll hurt awful bad.”
Mom’s dead lilacs sprang to mind. And how I’d killed them.
Squeezing my free hand around the bottom of the chair, I shrugged. “I bet I’ve hurt worse.”
She snapped a thorn off and placed it by my arm. “I don’t doubt you. I see pain all over your face.”
“But aren’t you blind?”
“As a bat,” she said and opened a drawer near her feet. “But that don’t mean I can’t see nuthin’.”
I nodded, though I didn’t see how that was possible. “Tell me about the Counselor.”
“Ah, the Counselor.” She set some matches next to my arm and kept digging in the drawer. “Not much to say ‘cept he rules over the Core and he’s just as dead as everyone else there.”
“He’s dead?” I sounded surprised, but why should I be? Everyone was dead these days.
“Well, you’d have to be to be inside the Core. If death was a person, he’d be the Counselor. Death’s a powerful thing.”
My throat pulled tight at the thought of Mom. Death was a powerfully painful thing.
Mrs. Star placed a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the desk and rummaged some more. “The Counselor has Our Trammeler arrest about a thousand Sorceresses a day all over the world for supporting Gretchen and various other crimes.”
“What?” A thousand a day?
“Yep, which means those thousand Sorceresses die once they’re convicted. Until then, they’re trapped beneath the gateways to the Core under Our Trammeler’s roots.”
“The gateways?”
“All graveyards are gateways for the dead, though usually it’s a one-way trip. Gretchen changed all that when she resurrected her sister. Death ain’t final no more.” Mrs. Star pursed her weathered lips and slammed the drawer. “Where is that gauze?
I flipped my arm over so I wouldn’t have to look at the black death number. “No one except Tram is brave enough to go after One and Two?”
Mrs. Star bent to the other side of the desk and opened
another drawer. “That and there just ain’t that many Trammelers anymore willing to admit it. Gretchen killed most of ‘em before she was caught and sent to the Core.”
“Why did she kill them?”
“I ‘spect they were tryin’ to catch her.” She closed the drawer and set some gauze on the desk. “It’s said that people used to leave gifts for their dead to bribe the Counselor so he wouldn’t send their family or friends to the Core. But Gretchen would appear and take the gifts. The Counselor had too many already, she’d say. And if any a them gift-givers had Trammeler blood, she’d kill ‘em.”
“Why?”
She fiddled with the matchbox and shrugged. “No one left gifts for their dead after that, unless they wanted Gretchen to show up. The Counselor sent the Trammelers after her, every single one of ‘em, and she killed so many of ‘em in violent, horrifyin’ ways.” She struck a match and touched it to the thorn. Her face came alive with the shadows of the moth’s wings and the flicker of the flame. “She started a war between the Sorceresses and the Trammelers with all her killins’, and it ended when she was finally caught.” She twisted off the lid to the rubbing alcohol, turned my arm over, and splashed some over my spider bite.
I wrinkled my nose at the chemical smell.
She picked up the thorn and took a deep breath. I became suddenly hyper-aware that a blind lady was about to stab me. She brought the thorn closer to my arm.
I laid it flat for her and swallowed. “Why was I chosen?”
“I ‘spect you gave a gift to the dead that was bigger than you thought.” She twitched her lips back and forth, studying my arm. “The magical world’s gone beehive over you, tryin’ to figure you out.”
“Do you know how to stop One and Two?” Hope filled my words.
“I wish I did, hon.” She chewed her lip. “That spider venom inside you. It comes from the hawthorn tree. Some folks say the darkness that drips from One and Two’s feet also comes from the hawthorn.” She paused. “It’s death’s tree.”
My heart stuttered, but I fisted my hand.
She positioned the thorn over the spider bite and looked at me. It seemed like her blind blue eyes saw everything. “Are you ready?”
My mouth went dry, but I nodded.
She plunged the thorn down. Pain, so much worse than I ever imagined, swept through me. I smothered a scream, smashing my free hand to my mouth and biting down on my fist. High-pitched moans slipped through anyway. My eyes fluttered. All I could see was red and black. Then white. A ball of light hovered above us. Small, marble-sized. Black ink soared up and disappeared inside like the light was a sponge.
“Once the poison is out, I’ll stop the bleedin’,” Mrs. Star yelled over my wails.
The moth kicked shadows all over her face, faster and faster, until I wasn’t sure if light and dark were actually beating against my brain.
“Okay, hon, it’s out.” The light sank into Mrs. Star’s outstretched hand. She wrapped gauze around my wrist, and I sat back blinking, breathing, still alive.
Blood smeared the desk, but there was no more three tattoo. The pain was already fading. If only that thorn could get rid of me actually being Three.
Mrs. Star finished with the gauze and opened a drawer to put it back. But she stopped, her eyes widening. She stared up at the ceiling. All the overhead lights flickered. Then they shattered. Glass sprayed everywhere, landing in sharp blasts. Shards bit into my scalp before I had a chance to duck.
The floor quaked.
I pitched forward, slamming my face into the edge of the desk. Red bolts of pain spotted the darkness. I growled through it, “Mrs. Star?”
Something exploded on both sides of the room. The ground buckled.
I threw myself to the floor and crawled across broken glass behind the desk. “Mrs. Star, are you okay?” I blindly reached out for her and found a bony, trembling shoulder.
“I see them coming,” she said.
Crash. Crash. One right after the other. Like heavy dominoes smacking into each other. Like bookshelves. Getting closer.
I yanked Mrs. Star to the floor and pushed her under the desk. Crash. Crash. No room under there for me.
An icy arm slithered across my chest from behind. Fingers wrenched me up from the floor. Two glowing blue eyes glared at me. The force of the Sorceress’s chilly touch squeezed my throat and cut my scream. My feet left the ground. My stomach dropped. I twisted to break free.
Crash. A fallen bookshelf landed right below me, where Mrs. Star had sat seconds before.
Another explosion from below, but I couldn’t see what it was.
Whispers churned through the darkness. The Sorceress’s arm slipped from my throat. I dragged in a breath and tasted their rot. She jerked and kicked at something unseen.
“One, let her go,” Tram snarled from somewhere to my right.
Roots slid between mine and the Sorceress’s bodies. Bark scraped my injured arm. I screamed and clawed at her to let me go.
A white marble sparked below me. It floated upward, chasing away the darkness as it brightened. Mrs. Star held it in the palm of her hand and blew it like a kiss.
Two appeared and hovered right next to One. She caught the marble and curled a hand over it. It sizzled in her palm, louder than the snaking roots and breaking ground. Chunks of light escaped through the cracks between her skeletal knuckles. The Sorceress hissed at it, but the marble sizzled louder.
Roots raced up from the ground, hundreds of them, and cocooned the Sorceressi and me together. I jerked and fought against her, but One ignored me. A puff of black mist blew from her sagging mouth and drifted through the breaks in the roots.
Outside the cocoon, Two hissed, but the ball of light she held grew brighter. Its intensity shot beams behind my eyes.
Loud snaps echoed while more roots twisted up from what was left of the floor. Then the roots started to drag us all down.
I bucked against One, but her frozen grip around my stomach locked me in place. The roots dragged us down lower, my feet just a few inches above the concrete rubble. Tram couldn’t drag me down with them. He wouldn’t.
Mrs. Star blew another glowing marble out of her hand. It traced clouds of dust and debris above our root-covered heads.
Tram’s glare was aimed at the Sorceressi. “It’s over. The light’s draining your powers.”
From the corner of my eye, the black mist One had spit out earlier floated just behind Tram’s head.
“Tram,” I yelled.
“Let her go. Now,” Tram growled.
The mist flew into his mouth while he spoke. He choked and gagged.
“Tram!”
He toppled backward on an overturned bookshelf. He arched his back, squeezed his eyes shut, and screamed.
I jabbed and kicked with every ounce of strength I had, but One held me tight.
Tram writhed on the ground. His cries of pain dug gaping holes from my heart.
When his eyes finally opened, they glowed blue. Sorceress blue. My stomach lurched. “Your gift is your blood. How dare you waste it for this!” Black mist gusted from his lips. His voice sounded raspy like wind blowing across dead leaves. He groaned. His blue eyes turned normal green, then back again.
Tears dripped down my cheeks. “Stop. What are you doing to him?” I shouted and reared my body back and forth against One’s grasp.
The roots burst from our bodies and fell to the ground like confetti. One held me above the ground even tighter.
Two crunched the light in her fist, destroying it, and hissed at the marble overhead. It shattered. Darkness choked the room.
Tram gazed upward, his glowing blue eyes like two bullets to my heart. “You will keep your blood. We will make sure.” A black wisp of air drifted over the light of his eyes before it faded away.
The frozen touch left me, and I crumpled onto the sharpened edges of broken concrete and wood. They were gone.
Shaking uncontrollably, I crawled in the direction where I thought Tram was.
Light shot up into the air.
“Is everyone all right?” Mrs. Star asked, her voice a trembling whisper.
Tram lay stretched out on the ripped apart concrete, his body twitching. I reached out to touch him, tears sliding down my face.
“Tram.” His perfect green eyes looked back at me, though they were rimmed in red and shined with agony. “Are you okay?” Instead of letting him answer, I buried my head in the crook of his neck and sobbed.
Both his arms slid around my waist, but soon they pushed me away. “I have to go after them,” he said and stood. It looked like his feet were unsure of which way was down, he was so wobbly.
I rested my hands on his chest to hold him up, afraid I would damage him further if I pressed too hard.
He cupped a hand around my cheek. “Are you okay?” The quiver in his voice matched the tremble in his body.
“No.” I leaned into his palm, studying his cracked and bruised face. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
He pulled away and held my arm out. “But no more venom.” Blood oozed into the gauze, a red rose blooming in the center of what used to be my death tattoo. “Mrs. Star?”
“I’m okay.” She stumbled over the uneven concrete, her face white as the paper inside all the spilled books. “Just catch them.”
Tram kissed my fingers, and then disappeared inside the hole in my driveway. Pressing my lips together, I turned my back on the scrape of concrete sliding back into place. I ached for him to come back to me, to stop chasing the uncatchable, for this nightmare to be over.
This was too much. Sorceressi couldn’t exist. People couldn’t come back from the dead. There was no such thing as Three. But one glance at my yard proved otherwise.
The whole thing had turned nightmare black. The lone tree raised bare skeletal branches to the sky. It looked like it belonged in Hell’s Bells Home and Garden. I wanted to run and hide somewhere, to vanish like Tram. But not like One and Two. No, not like them.
Dad’s face appeared at the living room window. His eyes widened as he took in the yard.
I ran to the porch, not letting my gaze wander to the blue tarps on either side, and ripped the door open. “Dad—”
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 16