(Skeleton Key) Princess of the Damned

by Wendy Knight

  He did know, though, that he didn't hit Mary. None of them did. She fled backwards, into the shadows, before she whirled away and ran.

  Landon went after her. Devons yelled his name, but turning back wasn't an option. He hurdled the fallen court members and shoved past the ones still standing, like he was in a football game running the ball for all he was worth.

  But this wasn't a game. He had Mary in his sights and he was faster than she was. He skidded to a halt and jerked the gun up again, barely aiming as he squeezed off another round. He didn't see if it hit, though, as he was tackled from behind. The gun clattered out of his hand and skittered across the cement, spinning idly a few feet out of reach. Landon kicked hard, freeing his legs, and dove for the gun.

  "Dammit, Landon! Stay down!" Devons tackled him again, this time grinding his face into the cement and holding him there. Landon twisted enough that he could see Mary, pointing one clawed finger straight at him. She smirked before she turned on her heel, followed by the remaining members of her court. They all surrounded her, protecting her. There was no way to get to her now.

  Bullets shot over their heads, and Landon stopped fighting, realizing—finally—what was going on. The cops were there. They were trying to chase Mary, too.

  Devon finally released him and climbed to his feet. "That was stupid, kid. You could have been killed."

  "It wouldn't be the first time." Landon climbed to his feet, staring down the tunnel, trying to decide if he could outrun Devons and still catch Mary. The rifle laid silently on the floor, but he still had the pistol.

  Reading his mind, Devons grabbed him. "Enough, Landon." His grip was like iron. The swat team flowed around them, several glaring at Landon as they went. "Stupid kid."

  "How'd you get down here so fast?" Landon asked, jerking his arm free.

  "We followed you. Did you really think we wouldn't have someone watching you?"

  Landon shrugged. Being followed hadn't even occurred to him.

  Devons glared at him, crossing his arms over his chest. "I should arrest you right now for obstruction of justice. Or possession of a firearm."

  "Probably." Landon nodded. "But I'm your best shot of finding Mary."

  "You're no good to us dead, kid."

  Finally, Landon dropped the attitude. "I can find her, but I can't tell you how. Just don't arrest me."

  Devon jerked his chin in the direction the team had gone. "We don't need you anymore."

  Landon shook his head. "We'll see."

  He'd killed a man. The man was evil and probably already supposed to be dead, but still, as the adrenaline wore off, Landon started to shake. And then he threw up, all over Devons' shoes.

  Sighing, Devons pulled him up. "Come on. I'm taking you to the station."

  Grudgingly, Landon followed him. There were no more shots fired. Behind them, the subway tunnels were silent.

  Mary had escaped.

  Again.

  "IF I COULD JUST stay this angry…" Eiress paced in front of her doorway, glancing briefly at Kaida before staring again toward the ballroom, "I could kill them as soon as they come around the corner, instead of waiting until I'm swarmed by them and they're almost to you."

  Kaida puffed a ring of smoke in agreement.

  "The key is to hold on to my anger." Bitterness had driven Mary to become what she was, and letting bitterness go was what had saved Eiress from becoming just like her. Now, trying to stay angry was exhausting. But she was getting the hang of it. The last wave of souls had come about fifteen minutes ago, and she'd managed to blow them up or start them on fire before most of them had made it past her to Kaida.

  Progress.

  For some reason, everything left in this world wanted Kaida. She'd had to nail the shutters closed because nightmares kept trying to get in. She now stood guard at the doorway because souls she'd sent to hell kept coming back, only to smother her under their weight while they fought to get to her dragon.

  Eiress was getting faster, though. She'd discovered if she moved her fingers while she was angry, it would burn designs into the air. Sometimes, it would change the fire coming from her hands.

  The souls weren't quiet, when they came. They talked amongst themselves, moaned, and mostly screamed.

  A lot.

  So she could hear when the next wave made it to the broken gates, even though it was half a castle away. She turned toward the noise, twisting her fingers as fear tore at her stomach. "Stay angry. Stay angry."

  She wasn't angry. She was terrified.

  The fire within her abruptly died, as it did every time she became more scared than mad, which only intensified the fear because she didn't know when or if she'd be able to fight again. "Help," she whispered.

  As if he'd heard her, she felt Landon's presence. It radiated from the mirror and swirled around her. She raised her chin and squared her shoulders.

  "Stay angry."

  Eiress thought about everything she'd been through that day. And then the day before. She'd lost Landon, she'd nearly lost Kaida, she'd blown up the gates and fought Elizabeth twice.

  Flames leaped from her fingers.

  Screaming, because she'd found it helpful when she screamed like the world's angriest banshee, she jerked her hands up and threw the fire at the souls as they rounded the corner. They came straight toward her, hands like claws reaching for her soul. Their sins swirled through them like maggots. Eiress stumbled back through the doorway. Kaida attempted to get up, maybe to help or maybe to hide, Eiress wasn't sure, but his movement sent a frenzy through the souls and they moved faster, their screams more frantic and more piercing.

  Eiress leaped between them and Kaida, screaming louder. Again and again, the fire came unbidden to her palms, and again and again she threw it at the souls. The horrors of the last few days—and then the last few lifetimes—ran on repeat through her head, filling her mind with a fury she'd never known before.

  She felt like she could fly.

  Instead, she fought the souls. When the remainder of them turned and fled, she went after them, jerking her skirts from beneath her feet so she could run faster. One soul, fairly new to the area and braver than the rest—perhaps because he hadn't actually been to hell yet—stopped to make his stand.

  Eiress launched herself from the wall and dove over him. As she rolled through the air, a tangle of skirts, petticoats, hair and limbs, she thrust the fire at him, watching in fascination as the flames devoured him from the head down.

  She landed on the other side of him, on one knee and one foot, panting. As the soul screamed, Eiress smiled.

  Standing, she turned in a slow circle. She'd chased them all the way to the ballroom. It sat empty, now that she'd killed everything. Charred on the edges, but silent except for the echo of screams from hell. She reached up, adjusted her crown, and swished her skirts out of the way.

  Then she went back to her rooms.

  Kaida was pacing the window seat, his gray scales shimmering against weak, black candlelight. He hissed at her, angry enough to actually produce sparks.

  "Look at you! Breathing fire and shooting sparks!" She scooped him up and scratched his head. "My little baby's all grown up."

  Kaida huffed and pouted for several seconds before he gave up and flopped over so she could rub his belly. Eiress laughed lightly, glancing over at the mirror. "Things are changing here, Landon."

  If she listened really hard, she could almost believe she heard him ask how, so she continued. "I have this…power. This strength. Did you see me chase them? Did you see me save us? I'm learning to control it. When Mary comes back, I will be able to—I mean—I'll be able to protect you. All of you."

  She felt Landon's despair radiate from the mirror like a heat wave. But she couldn't fail this. This is how she'd save Landon where she had failed him before. And maybe, somewhere out there, her little brother Kaida needed saving, too. And Landon's parents.

  Shaking her head and forcing a smile, she beamed at the mirror. "But first, I have t
o practice. I have to be able to attack when I want, instead of waiting until situations get dire. And I hear more coming." She set Kaida on her bed and patted his head. "Time to go to work."

  "YOU'RE AWFULLY QUIET, LANDON." HIS DAD glanced over, the headlights flashing against his glasses.

  Landon had been watching Eiress in the rearview mirror, fighting like a she-demon, throwing fire from her fingers and exploding everything that moved. He was at once horror stricken and amazingly impressed.

  "When I said we would get through this, I didn't mean to somehow imply that it was okay to go racing through the subway shooting at a serial killer. What the hell is the matter with you?"

  Landon hung his head. He'd lived his whole life trying to be what he was supposed to be. Pretending he didn't see Eiress, pretending he wasn't crazy. He went to school, he played football, he never got in trouble. He never made them worry, he never partied with friends. He'd been someone he wasn't, hid the most important thing in his life from them. And now, at the worst possible time, he was throwing everything he was right in his dad's face.

  And there was nothing Landon could say to make it better.

  "Landon, what is going on? Why are you doing this to us? Where did we go wrong?" His dad ran a hand through his hair and suddenly looked older than his forty-eight years.

  "You didn't go wrong. This isn't some random act of rebellion," Landon muttered.

  "Really? So you think you're a superhero now? The cops are tailing you! They're probably following us home right now! And my guns are in impound, Landon. How the hell is this not rebellion?"

  Landon had tried asking about his mom when his dad had first picked him up. His dad had told him, tersely, that she was still unconscious but they had upgraded her status to stable. He'd been yelling at Landon ever since.

  "I'm trying to do what's right, Dad," Landon suddenly snapped, raising his head. "That's what you taught me to do, isn't it? Do what's right, help people, put others before me? Well that's what I'm doing. Maybe if you had listened to me when I was little, we wouldn't be in this mess. But no, you told me I was crazy and sent me to that freaky doctor who forced pills down my throat!" Landon was yelling, and it echoed through the car. He wasn't sure when he had started, or where the words had come from. And he couldn't take them back.

  His dad gaped at him silently for several long seconds. "What?"

  Landon rolled his eyes and turned back to the rearview mirror. Eiress hadn't left the room. Instead, she was staring intently at the mirror, biting her lip. She could feel what he felt, and she knew something was wrong. Slowly, she raised her hand and put it on the mirror. "I'm here," she whispered.

  "How does your imaginary friend from fourteen years ago have anything to do with this?" His dad was yelling, too.

  Landon pulled his gaze from Eiress, but the strength of her stare stayed with him. "She's not imaginary. If you had ever listened to me instead of telling me I was crazy—"

  "You're saying that your actions the past few days have been sane? And now you're talking about some girl in a mirror that you haven't seen for fourteen years!"

  Absently, Landon wondered if his dad was even watching the road. They were weaving through the lines, and it wouldn't surprise Landon at all if Devons was behind them, about to pull them over.

  "Say something, Landon!"

  "Fine." Landon's tenuous hold on calm snapped. "I'll say something. That girl in the mirror? I see her every damn time I look in the mirror. Yeah, and not only that, but I'm in love with her. I'm so crazy, mindlessly, insanely in love with her that I risked everything to save her, and I failed. I failed, and I got the shit beat out of me, and I got sent home. And that thing out there?" He thrust his hand at the windshield. "That thing out there that attacked Mom? I set her free. She's here because of me. Mom's unconscious because of me."

  His dad only blinked. Slowly, without taking his eyes off Landon, he pulled the car to the side of the road. "What?" he whispered once the car was stopped.

  "She's not imaginary," Landon said, suddenly exhausted. "I broke my hand breaking into a headstone in a grave in West Haven. To get a key. That key—" Landon's voice broke, "—opened a lock that held Eiress chained at the gates of hell. Except it let Bloody Mary out, too, and she came through the mirror and attacked Mom. And while I was failing at everything, Eiress was fighting the demons, and I died. She saved us, and I died. How's that, Dad? How's that for saying something?"

  For several long minutes, they sat in silence. A car behind them flashed its lights, and, as Landon suspected, Devons got out and came to their window.

  "Awesome," Landon growled, crossing his arms and collapsing back against the seat to glare out the opposite window.

  "Everything all right?" Devons asked when Landon's dad rolled down the window.

  This is where he'll tell them I'm crazy and they'll take me right back to some stupid doctor.

  "My wife is lying in a coma in the hospital and my son thinks he's her avenging angel."

  Landon's head snapped up, but his dad was still talking.

  "That leads to some tense conversations, as you can imagine, and I pulled over in the act of being a responsible driver. Is that a problem?"

  Devons' eyes moved from Landon's dad to Landon, his eyebrow furrowing. "No. Have a good night." Nodding once, he left and went back to his car.

  "You're not gonna send me—"

  "I don't know what the hell is going on, Landon. We'll have to talk to a counselor. Maybe it's long overdue—"

  "I'm not crazy!" Landon bellowed. "Why can't you believe that?"

  "Because what you're saying and doing is unbelievable!"

  "I know how it sounds! But I'm asking you, for once, to trust me. We were okay at the hospital. What changed?"

  "What changed? Are you kidding me?" His dad threw his head back and laughed, but it was empty of mirth. "I just picked you up at a police station because you were chasing down a serial killer!"

  Landon fell back against the seat again, shaking his head. "Fine. Believe what you want. Can we just go home?"

  Without a word, his dad shifted the car into drive and pulled back onto the road. Too much had been said already, so they rode in silence. As soon as they parked in the garage, Landon got out of the car and slammed the door. They both stalked into the house, his dad getting to slam the door this time. Landon dropped his stuff on the counter and went up to his room. Collapsing on his bed, he rolled toward the mirror. "What do I do now?"

  Eiress was fighting demons. She didn't even need him anymore. And her mother was silent. There were no images of Mary in the mirror. No whispered words to show him the path.

  Several minutes later, his dad's voice rumbled through the vent in the floor. "I don't know. Maybe he's had a psychological break or something. He's always been such a good kid…Doctor said it might be caused by the stress of Laura's attack."

  Landon rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head.

  He'd failed. At everything.

  His cell phone, which had been sitting on his dresser since…he wasn't sure when…started to ring. It was the popular love song by a boy band he didn't even like—meaning it was Cassie. He had no desire whatsoever to talk to her. Where had she been when his mother got attacked? His dad said she was still there when he got up, so where had Cassie gone between then and when Mary had come through the mirror?

  The phone stopped ringing, and the one downstairs rang, instead. She must have seen them come home. "Hello?" His dad sounded exhausted. "Yeah, Cassie, he's home, but he's not up to talking right now." Long pause, and then he said, "Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell him you called. Bye, sweetie."

  Yeah. They'd always loved Cassie. She wasn't imaginary.

  Landon threw his pillow at the door, effectively slamming it shut.

  Twenty minutes later, he heard a knock on the back door. "Seriously, Cassie?" he groaned, rolling onto his back and forcing himself to sit up. With the door shut, he couldn't hear as well, but it sounded like Cassie was upse
t. There was back and forth for several tense seconds, and then the door slammed again.

  Frowning, Landon pushed himself to his feet and went to the window. His dad was sprinting across the grass to the road. Cassie was nowhere in sight. "What in the hell…?"

  He glanced at Eiress. She stared back at him and then put her hand against the mirror, sending him strength.

  "She comes."

  "What?" Landon spun in a circle, barely catching a glimpse of Eiress's mother standing near the mirror.

  "Cassie—she came to get my dad—did Mary—" He took off, racing out of his room and down the stairs.

  He nearly bowled Cassie over as she was coming up the stairs. She toppled backward and he grabbed her by the shoulders to save her. "What are you doing here? Where'd my dad go?"

  "Landon, I need to talk to—"

  "Cassie, what the hell is going on?" He looked past her to the front door his dad had just left from. His shoes sat empty in the basket.

  "I just need to talk to you—"

  "She comes, Landon. Prepare yourself."

  Eiress's mother was shimmering at the bottom of the stairs. He could see the fear in her eyes, and the determination. "Arm yourself."

  "Cassie, you have to get out of here. Go home, lock the door. Keep my dad out of here, and call the cops. Ask for Devons, he'll know what you're talking about." He pushed her backward, down the stairs. When she hit the tile, she dug in her heels.

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you, Landon."

  He looked down at her, for the first time noticing that her eyes were filled with tears and her cheeks were streaked with mascara. "I told your dad my parents were hurt. To get him out of here."

  Horror gripped Landon's chest as he struggled to understand. "What did you do, Cassie?"

  She sobbed.

  "Cassie!"

  She covered her face in her hands. "She came—when you left me here! She came and she saw that I was crying and she knew—she knew it was because of you and she said all this stuff about how evil men are and how she could make me feel better."