Harley Merlin 19: Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere

by Bella Forrest

  “That’s why I don’t do that,” she croaked. “I can never hold it for long. I just wanted to get us to the road, ahead of the Wisps.”

  Speaking of which, the Wisps were rushing down the slope of the hill, burning brightly. The pixies twisted around and hurtled back toward the oncoming Wisps in a phalanx of sorts—a square of rows, the frontline clasping hands to expel a massive blast of energy. The second line echoed the action as the front line moved to the back, throwing out a pulse that shook the ground beneath my feet. By the time it got to the third line, the Wisps were well and truly peeved. Rallying their forces, they combined into what could only be described as an uber-Wisp, the blaze of its light so intense that I could feel it from where I stood, a safe distance away.

  As the two tribes collided, my heart wrenched. The two front lines of pixies howled in pain as the Wisps scorched them, while the back two lines fought valiantly with their own light, sending out a unified explosion of jarring energy that managed to send the uber-Wisp careening backward. But it was too late for those who’d gotten too close to the Wisps’ pumped-up flame. Thin bodies tumbled from the air and landed in the damp grass, their vivid colors fading to a deathly white that made me scream.

  “NO!” I yelled, but there was no Fergus to stop the Wisps this time. I whirled to face Charlotte. Her breaths had evened out, and she didn’t look so pale anymore. “You have to help them, Charlotte. They’ll die if you don’t.”

  Charlotte straightened up. “I guess I owe them that much, for saving me earlier.”

  Lifting her palms, she stormed into the fray. The uber-Wisp had returned, pummeling my pixies with a breathtaking fury. The two remaining lines linked up their power, strands of bronzed fire throbbing between them all. They chanted, building up the inferno of their attack, and launched a fireball—twice as large as the Wisp—right at it. To my horror, the uber-Wisp dodged the projectile and swung forward, easily incinerating another row of pixies. They crumbled to dust, and my knees gave way.

  “Don’t kill them. Please, don’t…”

  My begging fell on deaf ears. The Wisps didn’t care if it pained me; I wasn’t the one giving the orders. And yet, I couldn’t understand why they were trying to stand in our way. Surely this was what Fergus wanted, to reunite with Lorelei? Did he not understand what we were attempting to do for him? If it hadn’t been for the fact that Genie and Nathan, and so many others, were still trapped in Fergus’s realm, I’d have dumped his stupid bones right there. He’d killed my creatures. Why did he deserve to be reunited with his love?

  That’s how Leviathan would think. My brain served me a swift reminder that I wasn’t spiteful or vengeful like the monster who’d given me this ability. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t hate Fergus’s guts for what his Wisps had done to my pixies. This was for Genie, not for that cruel spirit.

  “I’ve had just about enough of you lot.” Charlotte clapped her palms together, unleashing a wave of Telekinesis that enveloped the uber-Wisp. It struggled to break free, but she’d pulled out the big guns. Her face scrunched under the pressure of holding the furious ball of light, a vein popping under the skin of her neck. With one guttural grunt, she hurled the uber-Wisp as far as her magical muscles allowed. It soared through the air, arcing like a true comet, and disappeared into the distance.

  But the Wisps would be back. I knew that much.

  Still red in the face, Charlotte ran back to me. A meager, devastating trio of pixies followed her. Two landed on her shoulders—a male and female, their pulsating spots blue with grief. And Boudicca came to rest on my shoulder, her head bowed as tiny, sparkling tears slid down her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, knowing it could never be enough.

  She lifted her mournful gaze and came closer to my face, resting her small forehead against mine. If this was her forgiveness, I didn’t deserve it. Too many of her kind had died for my sake, and I couldn’t take that back.

  “There’s a car coming!” Charlotte hissed, dragging me behind the drystone wall that bordered the road. “Stay here, I’m going to… uh… commandeer it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she’d already run to the road, waving her hands wildly. When I looked toward the spot where the pixies had fallen from the sky, there was nothing to see. They’d already returned to Chaos, unlike the pixies who still lay where they’d been cut down in Fergus’s sick paradise.

  The car screeched to a standstill and the driver got out: a middle-aged man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a kindly appearance. My entire body clenched as I waited to see what Charlotte would do. Rambling about a breakdown further up the dirt track, she got close enough to the guy to grab his temples. He looked startled for a split second before white light filtered through his skull and into his eyes, flowing from Charlotte’s palms. I’d seen enough of my dad’s work to know what I was seeing. She’d wiped his mind, which would leave him out cold for a while. Long enough for us to “commandeer” his vehicle, at any rate.

  “Get in!” Charlotte yelled, dragging the poor driver off to the side of the road. I didn’t agree with mind-wiping, as a rule, but saving the abductees had already called for gravedigging. Why not add another tally to this evening’s morally gray behavior?

  I ran to the waiting car and jumped in on the passenger side, balancing the sack of bones on my lap, while Charlotte finished hauling the driver to safety. After giving him a curiously gentle pat on the head, she darted back and slipped into the driver’s seat.

  “Seatbelts,” she instructed, holding the wheel gingerly, like it was her first time.

  I arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve driven a car before, right?”

  “In theory, yes.” Her hand reached for the gearstick and ground it into first. “Well, that didn’t sound healthy.”

  “Okay, let me rephrase. You’ve driven a stick before, right?” I grimaced as she put her foot down, the car bunny-hopping forward.

  Frowning as she revved the engine, Charlotte cast me an apprehensive look. “Not exactly, but I know how it’s supposed to work. In theory.”

  The car shot forward, making her yelp in surprise. Yanking the wheel sharply to the right, she spared us a head-on collision with the drystone wall and screeched into second gear way before the car was ready for it.

  Undeterred, she pushed down on the accelerator until the car had no choice but to obey. Still, if this car didn’t overheat or give up before we reached our destination, I knew we’d owe a debt to the automobile gods.

  “I think you’re supposed to change gear when it sounds like the car is about to explode,” I suggested, the revving sound splitting my eardrums.

  She shot me a dark look. “I know.”

  I watched as she rammed the gearstick into third, not too proud to try out my advice. Sure enough, the car settled into a more bearable sound, moving along the road without the startling lurch.

  “Can you guide us?” I looked at Boudicca’s forlorn face.

  With none of her usual sass, she fluttered to the dashboard and pointed dead ahead. With her back turned, I could’ve sworn I saw her shoulders shaking. As for the other two pixies, they’d settled in the back, hugging one another.

  As Charlotte picked up the pace, I realized there was one other factor we hadn’t considered. While the road we started on was fine, with enough width for Charlotte to try her hand at drag racing, it quickly gave way to Irish country roads that might as well have been labelled “deathtrap.” With drystone walls lining both sides, there was just enough room for the car, and shallow shoulders every so often so cars moving in the opposite direction could pass. Only, the lack of space hadn’t done anything to slow Charlotte down. She sped along as though she were on a freaking freeway, giving me a coronary every time a curve came out of nowhere.

  “Charlotte! Wall!” I braced against the dashboard as she made a hairpin turn down a very narrow road with walls on either side. I could only pray another car wouldn’t come in the opposite direction.

  �
��There’s plenty of space,” she replied confidently. But a squeal of metal on stone said otherwise, sending shivers down my spine as sparks erupted from the side of the car. “Okay, so not as much space as I thought. But at least I didn’t lose the side mi—”

  The mirror snapped off, dangling limply from its base.

  I took a deep breath. “You were saying?”

  “I’ve still got one wing mirror.” She smiled, hauling the poor car into fourth as she barreled down the road. “Nobody needs more than one.”

  “The manufacturers, that driver, and I would all beg to differ.” I slammed into the car door as Boudicca gestured right and Charlotte took it without even braking. Forget the car surviving, I wasn’t convinced I would. I could see the headlines now: two young women, a sack of bones, and three pixies crash into a field of sheep. No survivors.

  Charlotte chuckled. “Relax, Persie. I know what I’m doing. I’ll get us there.”

  “In one piece?” I shot back.

  “Not guaranteed, but you’ll be mostly intact, unlike Mr. Bonejangles over there.” She nodded to the sack, and I screamed.

  “Watch the road!”

  Her eyes flitted back. “Sorry. I forget how tricky these country lanes can be. Pretty though, in the daytime, and especially in the summer. If Victoria lets you stay, you should head out and take a walk sometime. It’s good to get out of the Institute for a bit, whenever you can.”

  “If?” What was that supposed to mean? I’d explained everything with the pixies. Surely, she didn’t think I’d get booted out once the truth was revealed.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Okay, so the pixies didn’t kidnap anyone. We were wrong about that, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods.” A half-smile lifted the corner of her lips. “One of those little schmucks definitely screwed with my hair dryer, and I want revenge. Half a ton of talc puffed out of it this morning, and I had to take another shower to get it out. And I definitely saw one of the little buggers in my room.”

  I heard a snort from the backseat and turned to find the she-pixie grinning mischievously at the other pixie. I thought it best not to point out the culprit to Charlotte, not when we were so close to so many obstacles she could smash us into.

  “Would you have my back, if Victoria wanted me gone?” I knew I might not like the answer, but I felt the frost thawing between us.

  She tilted her head thoughtfully. “If you get me a new hair dryer, sure.”

  “Was that a joke?” I laughed, relaxing slightly.

  “Do you know what, I think it was.” Charlotte smirked, the two of us settling into an amicable silence as she continued to put my life and limb at risk, following Boudicca’s rudimentary GPS.

  About ten minutes of white-knuckle driving later, we sped past a signpost that read: Killeany. A small fishing village appeared below us, a few orange lights burning in the darkness. But Boudicca didn’t want us to go down there. Instead, she led us around the village and up to a sparse promontory that overlooked the sea, which lay eerily flat and calm tonight, reflecting the moon above. Long grass susurrated in the icy wind, shrouding the bases of what appeared to be… headstones.

  They protruded like watchmen, or chess pieces waiting to be moved, adorned with plain crosses, circular crosses, and no crosses at all. And in the center stood the pointed bookends of what might once have been a chapel, or a church.

  “Is this it?” I looked to Boudicca, and she nodded.

  Charlotte parked the car, and we got out. The sound of the sea whispered upward, giving the impression of murmuring ghosts. The shadows had a mind of their own, my heart pounding with every movement in the corner of my eye. It was easy to feel as though you were being watched here, with so many tombstones to hide behind. However, the only things chasing us were far behind, though catching up with every wasted second.

  “Where’s Lorelei’s grave?” I urged, grabbing the sack of bones. At that moment, floating lights appeared on the horizon, gaining ground. We were fresh out of time.

  Boudicca roused herself from her grief and fluttered off through the tombstones. I raced after her, wishing I’d brought the spade from St. Finnean’s. I just hoped it wouldn’t matter how closely the bones were buried to one another, as long as they were close enough. Besides, I had Charlotte with me this time. Maybe she could turn into an aardvark and help me out.

  Tripping and stumbling over the stubs of ancient headstones, I chased Boudicca to the ruins of the church. She paused, hovering for a moment, as if trying to sense the right direction. And she’d need to be our eyes, because these headstones no longer bore any names at all.

  She shot forward, landing in front of a small, curved stone tucked right up against the ruined wall of the church, then stamping her foot and pointing enthusiastically. I guessed she’d found the right spot, and not a moment too soon. The Wisps had arrived, but they seemed to have changed their tactics. No, it was more than that. They seemed to have learned from the pixies. Instead of surging forward to launch a direct assault, they spread out in a square around the graveyard. Shimmering feelers of gaseous light stretched between the orbs, until they were all connected. I felt the pulse of their power throbbing through the air, making my head ache and raising the hairs on the back of my neck. The scent of ozone overwhelmed my senses, stinging my nostrils.

  “Get down!” Charlotte jumped on me, sending the two of us crashing into the dirt as the Wisps pummeled their unified energy into the center of the graveyard. As it collided in a deafening crash, a pillar of fire shot upward. In a scene that defied belief, I watched as brooding, indigo storm clouds charged in, conjured out of nowhere. A roll of terrifying thunder cracked, heralding the imminent tempest. Not a moment later, lightning forked down, striking a patch of grass not far from where we’d hit the ground, and I guessed the next strike would be more precise.

  “We have to bury these bones, now!” I scrambled to my feet. “Charlotte, I need you to dig. Telekinesis, Bestia, whatever it takes.”

  Her eyes widened in terror as another fork of lightning shattered the darkness, striking the top of a headstone about ten yards away. I felt the rumble of the impact beneath the ground, and my stomach lurched. If we didn’t hurry, we’d be toast.

  “Charlotte!” I bellowed above the din, grabbing her by the hand. I had to be brave, because no one would be brave for me. “Dig!”

  She shook her head, as if to get rid of the fear, and held out her hands. Green light rippled across her palms, Morphing them into the shovel-like hands of a giant mole. The rest of her stayed human, and she went to town on the soft earth, scooping great handfuls of dirt and flicking it over her shoulder. I joined her with my bare hands, raking at the soil with all the strength I had left.

  As we dug furiously, the heavens opened on us. Unnaturally fat blobs of rain hurtled down, ice cold and drenching, turning the soil to slick mud. The pixies ducked for cover in a nest of ivy that clung to the wall of the ruined church. Those huge droplets were probably like water bombs to them. But Charlotte and I didn’t stop. The Wisps could set their volatile storm on us, and we’d keep working until one of those forks of lightning stopped us.

  “It’s filling up!” Charlotte roared, as lightning crashed ever closer and rain filled the grave faster than we could dig. It was more swimming pool than hole.

  Jumping into the grave itself, my feet slipping and sliding, I gathered the slimy sludge into my arms and dumped it to the side of the grave. “It doesn’t matter! The bones just need to be buried together! I don’t care if they’re in six feet of water!”

  “What about us?” She lay flat on her belly, half of her leaning into the hole where she carried on scooping and flicking, scooping and flicking, in endless motion. “Neither of us is six feet tall!”

  “I can hold my breath!” I yelled back. “But you might have to fight them! Once they see we’re close, they’ll try to attack!”

  She mopped her brow, smearing muck all over her face. “Why are they trying to stop us?�
�

  “If the gateway shuts… they’ve got nowhere to go! They’ll have to pass on!”

  She nodded and dove back into the digging. “They think a half-life is better than an afterlife?!”

  “Looks like it!” I couldn’t see anything but murky water, filling the grave to the brim. But sudden logic gave me a thought—the water would’ve loosened the soil beneath by now. I could probably swim down and shove the bag of bones into the coffin with whatever was left of Lorelei. The idea of diving below the surface of that pool of death and decay didn’t fill me with joy, but Genie would’ve done it. I had to swallow my fear and disgust and get it done, or my friend would never come home again. And I wouldn’t have that resting on my conscience. It would destroy me.

  “Watch my back, I’m going in.” I grabbed the sack of bones and ducked under before Charlotte could stop me. As my head disappeared beneath the surface, the darkness overwhelmed everything. Shivering from the bitter cold that crept beneath my skin, I carried on, flipping upside down and dragging my hands along what I hoped was the bottom of the grave. My fingertips grazed something solid, just as a faint glow appeared in the water beside me. Boudicca, shining her light on the situation.

  Grateful to have my pixie friend at my side, I looked down through blurry eyes, but couldn’t see anything aside from shadowy shapes and floating detritus, while trying not to think of all the bacteria I was submerged in. I closed my eyes tight and used touch in place of sight again, until I felt that same firm something—definitely wooden—through the murk. I kicked my legs, aiming for that spot. I grappled until I found the edge of the lid and wrenched it upward, just enough to feed the neck of the sack into the gap. My lungs burned, desperate for air, but I couldn’t surface yet. I pushed the whole bag inside before sliding the coffin lid closed again.

  Grabbing the barely visible glow of Boudicca in my hand, I pushed up and broke the surface… just as the Wisps exploded in a massive flare of light that rivaled the lightning they’d brought down on us. Sparks rained down, and the storm receded as quickly as it had appeared.