“What more can you possibly do to me, you son of a bitch?” Alec hissed. “Set me against my best friend? Make me threaten to burn him alive at the stake? Oh no, wait! You did that already!”
Logan and the others watched in silence, caught up in the debacle Alec was making.
“Maybe you’ll get me all shot up by the cops! Oh, never mind! Did that already too!” Alec pretended to think a moment, and it was surreal for Logan, because as far as she knew, Dominic had never behaved this way in his life. “You could turn me into a ghost! That would show me! And then you could bribe me out of my pain to get me to betray more people! And then you could even have me invade the body of the same best friend I threatened to burn to death earlier and without even meaning to, turn him into a vampire!”
Alec began to chuckle, his fangs gleaming menacingly. “Silly me,” he said, shaking his head. “Looks like you’ve done it all.”
After a moment, he stopped laughing, grew serious, and straightened. His tone lowered. “So hit me with your best shot, asshole. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Logan’s mind worked overtime. She had maybe – maybe – one last shot at setting everything right. It was a long shot. It was a long shot’s long shot, in fact, and she didn’t really know why she bothered placing any faith in it.
Desperation, maybe. That’s what you did when there was nothing else left.
The field grew ominously quiet before Sam at last spoke, and his words carried across the dead and the roses like an echo of doom.
“Kill them all.”
Logan felt the command as if she’d been hit in the chest with it.
She had Ciara’s knowledge, so she knew there was only one being capable of taking a life in October Land. That was Sam. The Harvesters were an extension of their master. They’d been created by him, and they were a part of him. If their orders were to kill, then that was what they would do.
Logan placed her hands behind her back. In one hand, she held the thorny stem of a rose, and with careful, painful determination that she never would have guessed she had, she pressed that thorn into her undamaged palm, drawing an agonizing line with it across her unmarred flesh.
In the distance, the Harvesters began to change. One after another, they bent low, hunched over, or curled into themselves. There, they crackled and morphed, expanding in shape and form to take on wings, claws, and fangs. Their gray bodies hardened into stone. Their burning eyes grew larger and brighter. A few of them threw back their heads, howling like wolves and growling like demons, the sound like a mix between earthquakes, train whistles, and bansidhes.
Logan concentrated on them, partly because she wanted to take her mind off the pain of what she was doing, and partly because she couldn’t look away. The Harvesters shed their clothing to reveal familiar, monstrous forms the likes of which she’d seen perched on medieval buildings in the photos of her history books, but thirty times larger.
Gargoyles, she realized. Real ones.
Logan ripped her gaze from the impossible spectacle to glance up the hill at Meagan and the others. She, Lehrer, and Draper were casting spells. Logan could tell by the different colored auras surrounding the witch and wizards, the sparkling in the air around their hands, and the slight movement to their lips. Katelyn, a little further down the hill, had once more broken into a run toward Logan.
No one was holding back any more. There was no hesitation.
Off to the side, growing steadily bigger with each passing second, was the portal that would end everything one way or another.
Logan thought fast. She needed to get to Meagan. It was essential. She finished what she was doing, dropped the thorny stem, and looked back up at Sam.
He had been watching her.
Logan’s heart somersaulted. His beautiful eyes scorched white hot and icy cold, searing a hole through her and into her soul, pinning her to the spot. Those eyes remained on her as the Harvesters beside him one by one leapt into the air and flapped their massive, stony wings. Logan could feel the blast of air created by those wings all the way across the field.
Three gargoyles shot toward Alec, who covered his head with his arms. Logan cried out, thinking only of Dominic. Another two gargoyles headed toward Katelyn, and the rest raced through the air with a vengeance, moving toward the three spell casters at the top of the hill.
Logan broke into a run toward Dom. It didn’t matter that he was possessed by Alec or that he’d been turned into a vampire. He was still Dominic Maldovan, and those gargoyles were going to rip him to shreds.
But she’d only managed three striding steps before her path was blocked, and she was skidding to a halt to find herself face to face with the Lord of the Dead.
“You still wish to defy me?” he asked her softly. Calmly.
Logan’s heart pounded so hard, so loud, she would have thought she’d never lost any blood to Alec’s bite. But then, wounds healed in October Land. Maybe her blood was replenished.
“Yes,” she said, meaning it. “I do!”
Sam took a step toward her, cutting the space between them in half. “I will destroy your friends, Logan. I will watch your family mourn in loss and pain. I will allow my children to tear your love apart with their bare hands.”
I have to get to Meagan, she thought desperately.
“And yet,” Sam continued, “you would prefer this to spending eternity by my side?”
A light went on in Logan’s head as if someone had flipped a switch. She looked Sam in the eyes and straightened. She licked her lips. She heard the portal crackling, the spells being cast, she heard Dom and Katelyn fighting back, and she thought of Ciara and the castle on the cliff and of time and how long it lasted.
She saw herself in Mabel’s mirror, resplendent in a dress that had been made only for her. And everything in that glass reflected the woman she had longed to be her entire life. It was the woman she dreamed of being, the woman her soul was marked to become. She’d become a queen in that moment.
Samhain’s queen.
And no matter how afraid she had been, how confused and lost and even guilty she had felt, there had been a very big part of her that accepted it. Only too readily.
Logan thought of this now, of the masquerade and the bonfire, of the Orchards with their sweet, crisp apples, and of the Forest with its endless display of amber and ruby hues. She thought of the Patches – row upon row of waiting pumpkins that she had yet to even explore.
Orange. It had always been the color of happiness to Logan.
Halloween had always been a part of her.
In a whisper that no mortal could have heard, Logan said, “No.”
The world around them immediately slowed down, time took a step back, and everything was cast into a dimension of nearly stopped movement. It grew quiet in that slow moving stillness. Quiet so that it could hear her.
“No,” Logan repeated softly. “I wouldn’t.” A pulse in time. “I surrender.”
Chapter Thirty
Rather than wait for him to close the remaining distance between them, Logan took that step herself.
For the first time since she had met Samhain, the indomitable Lord of the Dead looked at her with something other than domination in his eyes. There was more there than conquest and desire. Now he looked at her as if she were his salvation. He looked at her with helplessness. His eyes beseeched her.
His lips parted, his expression uncertain.
He’s vulnerable, she realized. This means everything to him. And she understood why. She could see things from his side now. The problem was, he had yet to see things from hers.
The world continued to wait.
She could feel her wounds healing as she stood there, speaking from the heart and yet planning with her mind. She only hoped that the one wound she had so painstakingly created would not heal before she could use it.
“I surrender, Samhain,” she said. “I will join you as your queen.”
The universe pricked its ears. All of October Land t
urned to regard her, as if it wasn’t sure it had heard her correctly.
But she’d said it – and it was a promise she meant to keep.
Logan had a soul shaped like a jack-o’-lantern. It hung from a great tree and burned ever bright. She would never be fully happy or entirely complete in the world from which she’d come. There would always be something missing, some part of her that remembered this place – and the man who ruled its gates and the kingdom beyond.
After what felt like a short eternity, Sam closed his silver burning eyes.
The ground beneath Logan’s feet rumbled, as if it absorbed her promise and stored it in its memory forever.
It was done. There would be no escape now. Not for her. Not in the long run.
But there must be for her friends. Because after all they had done for her, the least she could do was see that they left October Land alive.
And if she could get to Meagan before her hand healed, there was still hope for something for her as well – for the short run.
“But you must stop this now,” she demanded, gesturing to the slow-motion mayhem that was spread across Fall Fields. Katelyn was ducking beneath an impending onslaught by two fierce gargoyles. Dominic’s arms were in the clawed grasps of two other gargoyles, who seemed about to rip him limb from limb. And the trio of spell casters on the hill stood with arms outstretched, eyes wide, magic circling and crackling against the dozen Harvesters who had flown toward them with evil, deadly intent.
Sam opened his eyes; they pulsed with light and power. But he said nothing.
Logan went on. “You must stop this,” she repeated. “And allow me to speak with them one last time before they return to their home.”
“Their home,” Sam repeated softly – so softly. And then he exhaled in what Logan knew was hard, long-earned relief. For if she was calling it their home, then it meant she no longer considered it to be hers.
He waited another moment, and everything and everyone was forced to wait with him. And then there was a sudden flash, bright and white and all-encompassing.
When it faded, Logan was standing beside Meagan, Lehrer, and Draper.
Time returned to normal, the gargoyles came screeching in, and Logan ducked instinctively.
Samhain spun toward the gargoyle Harvesters and held up his hand, arm outstretched, eyes flashing. The gargoyles came to a fast, wind-flapping halt all across the Fields.
Logan took her chance. This was it. It was now or never.
She turned toward Meagan just as Meagan was realizing that Logan was standing beside her when she hadn’t been half a second earlier.
“Logan!” Meagan cried.
“Meagan, read this!” Logan held up her hand, the one on which she had so carefully and painfully carved the spell – the single word – she hoped would set everything right. She could have carved it into her sleeve or torn it into the skirt of her gown, but as Ciara’s soul had taught her, the most powerful magic required blood. It required sacrifice.
Sam turned back around. Meagan looked at Logan questioningly.
“Read it now!” Logan cried.
“What are you –” Sam began, but he stopped mid-sentence when Logan pressed her other hand to his chest.
“NOW!”
Something must have clicked for Meagan, because her gaze focused on Logan’s hand, where a single thorn had cruelly carved a three letter word. The blood was dry and the wound was closing, but the letters were clear, puffy, raw and red.
“See!” Meagan exclaimed at the tops of her lungs. “SEE!”
The word came out amplified not only by Meagan’s magic, but by Logan’s as well. It was the magic of a witch and of a bard, and not just any bard, the chosen bard, the one who would be Samhain’s queen.
A spark of magical flame erupted in Logan’s palm, raced over her hand, and spread up her arm like wildfire. Logan felt it pass through her, like a hot flash times a hundred, and she gasped, rendered speechless at the sensation. But it was gone as quickly as it had come, shooting out the other side to rush down her other arm and pool in the hand she had pressed to Sam’s chest.
The fire erupted there, and the Death God cried out. He threw back his head and bellowed into the heavens.
The spell engulfed them both.
Logan closed her eyes –
and Samhain at last opened his.
Through him, she saw what he would now see. And through her, he saw life as he had never before been able to.
He saw her, in her home, holding her younger brother in her arms and rocking him back and forth, her sweet voice humming a melody that would bring him peace. His lip was broken and raw. A bruise was forming on his jaw. Sam saw this and understood what had happened. He also understood that Logan was the boy’s only solace, his only comfort, his only hope. And he was only a child.
Through Logan’s curse of empathy, Sam saw a living person, breathing, heart beating, soul burning bright, and understood the boy’s need. And the pain the boy would endure if his older sister was taken from him.
But the scene changed, shifting from bedroom to hospital room, and Sam was suddenly witnessing a man, standing still and alone at the side of a bed. A woman, wasted away but once obviously beautiful, lay unmoving beneath the thin sheets. The smell of antiseptic permeated the air. The man leaned down, brushed a long black lock from the woman’s bony cheek, and sucked back a sob that threatened to overwhelm him.
Out in the hall, a young boy with black hair and green eyes listened. He listened for the sound he had been dreading. The sound of a flat line… followed by his father’s tears. Because then he would know she was gone.
The boy’s name was Dominic Maldovan. He too was a child. This time, in every sense of the word.
In another hospital room, in another time and place, Sam beheld a young mother, her heart ripping itself to shreds as she sat on the edge of a bed and leaned in to steal one last hug from her baby girl’s limp, still warm form. For a short, terrible instant, because of Logan’s spell of empathy, Sam was this mother – this mother losing her child to disease.
Sam cried out, the pain overwhelming. He could never have imagined that depth of agony.
And Logan cried as well. Because she always would.
We live and lose, Sam. We surrender in the end – to you. You’re right. Everything comes your way in the end. But it’s everything before then that is important. This is what you have not known and therefore cannot understand.
Sam listened to her, to the magic of her spell, as she showed him what it really meant to be alive. He had no choice but to listen and watch. The magic of what she was showing him was more powerful than he was. It was more powerful than death.
He moved on, witnessing births and deaths and sicknesses and recoveries. He saw children learning to ride bicycles, couples wedding their best friends, gatherings and parties and funerals and wakes. He saw celebrations and birthdays – and his spirit held its breath as he beheld children in costumes. They were trick-or-treating, smiling and laughing and wishing that every day could be Halloween.
They were wishing that every day could be spent with Samhain. After all he’d done to them, taken from them, after all the pain he promised. They trusted him. Of all creatures. Children looked up to him. The faithful worshiped him. And all this time, he had looked down on them, the mortals who were but drops in the ocean of time, whose spirits entered his realm in the masses and whom he had never cared to know or understand.
Logan showed him the graves of the people he stood among, the graves of those that made up the border between October Land and the Realm of the Dead. She thought of the illnesses that had taken them, both physical and mental. She thought of the tears shed on their behalf, of the pain suffered for them even after their deaths.
Life comes with a quid pro quo, Sam.
It was something she, herself, had only just come to realize. Just as it is for a child who is given permission to go out but must return at a certain time, there were rules. There were
curfews.
It comes with conditions, she told him. Life is given, and it truly is a gift. It is given in exchange for responsibility… and hardship.
She thought of the grave of the four-year-old girl, Annie.
For some more than others.
She thought of her own brother, Taylor, and the way so many people assumed he was her cross to bear, her burden. His sickness made him violent, left him trembling, and haunted his every waking moment. He had unwittingly tortured his family with this illness for the duration of his life.
But how many people on the verge of death, if given the choice of further life in exchange for the care of a man such as Taylor would say no? How many?
Logan realized that Taylor was her curfew. He was her life condition. And probably only the first of many.
And something else she realized – just then, just in that very moment – was that Taylor’s life condition was so much worse than her own. His curfew had begun at birth. What he had to give in exchange for existence was literally unimaginable. It left him virtually destroyed.
Sacrifice.
All of the best magic required sacrifice.
And life was the most magical of all magic spells.
Chapter Thirty-One
When the visions faded and the spell ended, Logan opened her eyes.
She let her hand drop from Samhain’s black-clad chest and watched as he slowly lowered his head, his eyes closed. But upon his cheeks were the remnants of liquid proof. He had felt the empathy he had until now been incapable of feeling. It was the empathy of the living, felt by the Lord of the Dead.
In the aftermath of the spell, the world seemed winded. It was out of breath and dipped in silence. Logan could feel everyone watching – Alec, Dominic, Meagan, Lehrer, Draper, Katelyn, the Harvesters – everyone.
Sam opened his eyes.
Where there had been cold gray steel and the wicked glow of liquid lightning, there were storms now, deep and dark and troubled. There was a wretchedness to the knowledge in their depths, taking their mesmerizing pull deeper than ever before.
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