Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  “What?” He glanced at his grime-blackened hands. “Oh, shit.”

  “Okay, let’s go back to the house.” I regained a measure of control. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Cody fished the key for the padlock to his workshop out of the front pocket of his jeans, which I guess didn’t matter since they were already filthy. Inside the house, he let me turn on the water in the bathroom sink so he could wash his hands without getting soot all over the faucet handles.

  “I’m going to take a quick shower and throw these clothes in the washer,” he said. “After that, I think I could sleep. You?”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I’ll wash up when you’re done.”

  In the aftermath of our shared bout of hilarity, apprehension set in. Before changing into a tank top and pajama bottoms, I did one last canvass of Cody’s bedroom to make sure there was no cold iron we’d overlooked. Thank God his bed had a wooden frame. It was strange knowing that dauda-dagr was locked away in his workshop. Ever since Hel had given it to me, I’d kept it within easy reach—if not in my belt or my bag, then no more than a few steps away at most. Without access to it, I felt naked and vulnerable. Under the circumstances, I suppose that was a good thing.

  Clad in his plaid bathrobe, Cody emerged from the shower as I was stowing the hex charm under my pillow. “Is that it?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s in it?” he asked.

  “Henbane,” I said. “And my deepest, darkest fear. Other than that I don’t know and I didn’t ask.”

  “Here.” Shrugging out of his bathrobe, Cody held it out to me. “Thought you might want to borrow it again.”

  “Thanks.” I put it on over my pajamas, trying to ignore the fact that Cody was now bare-chested and in close proximity. “I’ll just wash up and go to bed. Um, Sinclair said you should stay out of my way and let the nightmare run its course. So if you hear me screaming in my sleep or something, don’t try to wake me.”

  Green flashed behind his eyes. “If I think you’re in serious danger, I’m not making any promises, Daisy.”

  “If I’m screaming or thrashing, it means I’m alive,” I said. “I think that’s pretty much all we’ve got to go on.”

  “That and the possibility of permanent psychological trauma,” he said. “Confronting your worst fear? You’re swimming in some deep waters there.”

  “Yeah.” I rummaged in my overnight bag for my toothbrush. “Right about now, I wish I had a bad case of arachnophobia. But it is what it is, Cody.”

  He nodded. “Good hunting.”

  “Thanks.”

  After washing my hands and face and brushing my teeth, I hung Cody’s bathrobe on its hook and curled up in his bed, careful not to disturb the leather pouch under my pillow. The house was dark and quiet. I lay motionless, listening for any sound of Cody’s presence in the other room, willing myself to sleep.

  In time, I did.

  I don’t know how long I slept before the nightmare began. Hours, maybe. It’s hard to say. Time is relative in dreams. I’ve had dreams that seemed to last for an entire day in the seven minutes it took for my alarm to go off after hitting the snooze button.

  This one didn’t seem like a nightmare at first. It was one of those dreams that started without a preamble. A mise-en-scène dream. I was standing in a hollow in the dunes, a long stick of driftwood in my hand, surrounded by a ring of people, mostly friends and family but a few others, too.

  And I did something terrible.

  Ever have a dream where you do something that would be unthinkable in real life in the most casual, nonchalant fashion? A dream where you kill someone, and your only concern is hiding the body so you don’t get caught? It was like that. I didn’t even have a reason for doing what I did. I just did it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  With the stick of driftwood in my hand, I sketched the sigil to summon my father in the sand, called his name, and invoked my birthright.

  For a moment, nothing happened, and I thought to myself, Well, that’s that. I guess it was a lie all along.

  And then the dune shuddered beneath my feet. The sigil turned into a funnel-shaped pit, sand draining from it like an hourglass. A bellow of laughter rumbled from somewhere deep beneath me.

  The soles of my feet began to tingle. A sense of power rose through me like a steady tide, creeping from my ankles to my knees, to my thighs, rising in a rush when it reached my groin and belly. It filled my chest with brightness; it filled my mouth with words of power and persuasion; it filled my hands with lightning.

  And it felt good, so good. I felt a hundred feet tall and crowned with fire, my tail lengthening and lashing like a deadly whip.

  It was real.

  I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of it.

  And then, one by one, the people surrounding me averted their faces. Cody. Jen. Mr. Leary. Mrs. Browne. Sinclair. Casimir.

  “It’s all right,” I said to them. “Look, it’s okay!”

  Only it wasn’t. Now, only now, did the horrible magnitude of what I’d done strike me, and I desperately wanted to go back and undo it. But it was done. All my joy ebbed away, and I broke into a cold sweat, appalled beyond words by my own action. I’d done it. I’d done it without a thought, and no one would look at me.

  Lee. Sandra Sweddon. Stefan. Dawn Evans. Lurine.

  My mother was the last, and she did look at me before she turned her face away. She gave me a look of such profound horror and disappointment that it felt like my heart was shattering inside me.

  There was even a sound of something vast breaking—but it wasn’t my heart. With a clap of earsplitting thunder, a jagged crack tore open the sky above us. Golden brilliance spilled through it, accompanied by a celestial trumpet blast, a clarion call to arms that vibrated in the very marrow of my bones, announcing that the end of days was upon us.

  It had happened.

  I had broken the world.

  I awoke with a gasp caught in my throat, trapped there by the gnarled, long-fingered hands that were strangling me. The Night Hag sat hunched on my chest like a spider, pinning me to the bed. In the dim recesses of my mind, it occurred to me that Danny Reynolds was right; she looked like a Halloween witch with sunken cheeks and a long, warty nose. The Night Hag’s eyes glowed red as she leaned closer to me, her tangled gray hair falling around my face in a lank curtain.

  I tried to move and couldn’t. It wasn’t just her weight on my chest; I was paralyzed. Utterly and completely paralyzed. A wave of sheer physical terror broke over me.

  The Night Hag’s face loomed in my vision as she licked her withered lips with a black tongue. “Oh, that was a good one, child,” she whispered to me. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

  I couldn’t even blink.

  Her hands tightened around my throat. “You’re not like the others, are you, half human? You wanted this. You sought this.”

  My lungs were burning for air, and I wasn’t sure if I was actually awake anymore. I strained to lift a hand from the bed and snatch a lock of her hair, to move my fingers, to grit my teeth. Anything.

  “Perhaps it would be for the best if you died in your sleep, child,” the Night Hag mused. “After all, the world would be spared the terrible fate of your great and grievous folly. Don’t you agree?”

  I wanted to deny it, but I had no voice with which to speak. What was happening to me wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. None of her victims had had bruises on their throats. Scott Evans had broken the paralysis to throttle his wife. Poor old Mrs. Claussen had found the strength to cry out, to raise her hands in self-defense.

  But then, none of them was a hell-spawn foolish enough to invoke her worst nightmare. I’d broken the world.

  Oh, God, I’d done it.

  Except I hadn’t done it, not really. It was just a dream, a terrible, terrible dream, one I’d invoked into being. I needed to fight. I needed to find my anger, but all I could feel was terror—the terror that I was going to die like this, rig
ht here in Cody’s bed, the terror that I was going to die knowing I was capable of doing the worst possible thing I could do, and that I’d lose my mother’s love forever because of it.

  I would have wept if I could have. Instead, all I could do was wonder whether if I passed out due to lack of oxygen, my heart would stop. I could almost hear my heartbeat faltering in my chest.

  “Oh, this is truly delicious.” The Night Hag’s face was inches away, the tip of her long nose brushing mine. Sickened by the sensation, I strained every muscle in my paralyzed body in a futile effort to get away from her touch. Her eyes were like two pools of glowing blood, pupils like black stones in the center. She wriggled her bony buttocks on my chest and licked her withered lips again, deliberately and lasciviously. “You’re the best ride I’ve had in a long time, child.”

  Okay, ewww!

  Beneath me, my tail curled in revulsion, and all at once the anger I hadn’t been able to access was there, molten and glorious. As my fear took a backseat to fury, the Night Hag’s grip on my throat loosened, her strength waning.

  I sucked a great, ragged breath of air into my lungs and found my voice. “I’m not your bitch, bitch!”

  The Night Hag hissed at me, baring a mouthful of broken black teeth.

  I felt her weight shift and grabbed two hanks of her greasy gray hair before she could pull away. “Oh, no, you don’t!” I said grimly. Tangled in Cody’s sheets, we grappled for purchase on the bed. The Night Hag might have been on top, but back when I was a kid, I’d been Mr. Rodriguez’s star pupil in Li’l Dragonz Tae Kwon Do for four years running. All I needed was one opening to find the leverage to flip her onto her back—and she was careless enough to give it to me.

  I pinned her arms with my knees and smushed her face with my left hand, using my right hand to yank a few strands of hair loose.

  She let out an unearthly yowl and began to struggle with renewed vigor.

  Let me tell you, it is not easy to tie a strand of hair around the neck of an eldritch crone fighting tooth and nail to prevent you from doing that very thing—and I’m not kidding about the tooth-and-nail part. I have the bite marks and scratches to prove it. The Night Hag shrieked and thrashed. I clamped down on her efforts with all the strength I could muster and swore, strands of hair slipping through my frantic fingers.

  At some point, I was vaguely aware of Cody shouting at me to wake up, but it seemed to be coming from a great distance. Since I couldn’t afford the distraction, I ignored him.

  I don’t know how many tries it took before I finally succeeded. Twenty? Thirty? It might even have been more. The first time I got a strand around her neck in a single knot, I thought I’d done it, but I was wrong. I should have known better. The fey tend to be literal. Anything easily undone can’t be considered binding.

  All I know is that I didn’t give up. I just kept trying, over and over, with dogged determination.

  At last I managed a double knot, drawing a single strand of greasy gray hair taut around the Night Hag’s neck and tying two knots in quick succession without breaking the fragile strand.

  Her body sagged beneath me, all the fight going out of her. Her red eyes glared up at me in sullen defeat.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “Gotcha.”

  Twenty

  “Daisy!” It sounded like Cody had been calling my name for a while. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I clambered off the Night Hag, who scuttled backward to crouch against the headboard of Cody’s bed, scowling bloody murder at me. “You see her, right?”

  “I sure do,” he said. “Nice work.”

  Oh, good, apparently I really was awake this time and we were all on the same plane of corporeal reality. “Thanks. Will you do me a favor and fetch dauda-dagr?” I said to Cody, keeping my eye on the Night Hag. “Just grab the belt and be careful not to touch the dagger itself.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” he said drily. “And by the way, it’s considered impolite to ask a werewolf to fetch.”

  I gave him a tired smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The Night Hag continued to glare at me in mute fury while Cody went out back to retrieve dauda-dagr, but when he returned and I buckled the leather belt around my waist and pulled the blade from its sheath, she let out a shriek and shrank farther back against the headboard. “You render me helpless and dare to draw cold iron on me?” she said in a querulous tone. “I have done nothing to warrant such a punishment!”

  “I beg to differ.” At some point during our struggle, Cody had turned on the overhead light in the bedroom. Let’s just say artificial lighting wasn’t kind to the Night Hag. She looked gray and shriveled, shrunken in on herself like the desiccated corpse of a spider. Only her crimson eyes were as malevolent as ever. “You killed an elderly woman.”

  “And nearly caused a man to kill himself,” Cody added, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded.

  The Night Hag sniffed. “I killed no one.”

  “Let’s not split hairs.” Standing beside the bed, I tilted dauda-dagr so the light made the runes etched on it flare to life. “What’s your name?”

  She bared the blackened stumps of her teeth at me. “You accuse me? I didn’t destroy the world!”

  “Neither did I,” I said. “People do all kinds of things in nightmares that they’d never do in real life.”

  “Is that what mortals tell themselves in their waking hours that they may endure the fearsome truths of their dreams, half human?” the Night Hag asked me, a cunning expression on her face. “I always wondered.”

  “Ignore her, Daisy,” Cody murmured. “She’s just trying to get in your head.”

  The Night Hag glanced at him. “Wrong, wolf. I’ve been in her head and I know what’s inside there.”

  I really, really didn’t want to continue that particular line of conversation. “Did I or did I not just bind you to my will?” I inquired. “So I’m asking again, on pain of cold steel, what’s your name?”

  “Gruoch,” she muttered.

  “Gruoch,” I repeated. “Okay, here’s the thing. You’re in Hel’s territory without permission, preying on innocent victims. Whether you’re willing to own it or not, you caused a woman’s death. As Hel’s liaison, as far I’m concerned, that’s a mortal offense.”

  Her crimson eyes widened. “I was invited!”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t think so. Hel herself told me you weren’t welcome here.”

  “Not by Hel,” Gruoch said in an aggrieved tone. “I never claimed it was Hel. But it’s written plain and simple on the Pemkowet Visitors Bureau’s website. It says Pemkowet is an inclusive community that welcomes all visitors.”

  I stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re citing the PVB’s website as justification?”

  She sniffed again. “In accordance with eldritch protocol, that constitutes an invitation. This seemed like a nice place for a getaway,” she added. “I’ll be noting otherwise in my TripAdvisor review.”

  Oh, gah!

  “No one invited you to hunt here,” Cody reminded her in a low voice tinged with a hint of growl.

  “It was not my fault that the old woman’s heart stopped.” Gruoch drew herself up with a semblance of dignity. “I did not cause the dreams that plagued her, no more than I did any of them. But she suffered. She suffered greatly. If I must be held responsible for her most timely death, I will claim it as an act of mercy.”

  “And the soldier?” I asked. “What about him?”

  The Night Hag shrugged her bony shoulders. “He is a broken thing. It might have been better for him.”

  “He’s a human being who served his country with valor and distinction,” I said. “No matter how ill-conceived the cause. And broken things can be mended.”

  “Oh?” Her bloodred gaze fixed on me. “Will you be able to mend the vault of heaven after you’ve broken it, child?”

  I hesitated, then shoved dauda-dagr back into its sheath. “Gruoch
, in accordance with the binding I’ve laid upon you, I forbid you forevermore to prey upon innocents.”

  She let out an earsplitting screech. “You cannot deprive me of my very sustenance!”

  “I can,” I said. “Unless you’d care to try to convince me that the boy you attacked deserved it? Danny Reynolds?” I reminded her. “Seven years old? Afraid of the night? Is he somehow better off for having been terrorized by you?”

  Gruoch glowered at me, but held her tongue.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of mortals with guilty consciences out there for you to prey on,” I said to her. “Mortals who actually do deserve nightmares. If you want to haunt the dreams of someone who committed murder and got away with it, fine. But not here. Not in Pemkowet, and not on my watch.” I held up my rune-marked left palm. “Gruoch the Night Hag, in Hel’s name, I banish you.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen. It was my first banishing. When Stefan banished members of the Outcast who rebelled against his leadership last summer, I’m pretty sure they just picked up and left town.

  But then, they weren’t fey dreamwalkers with a complicated relationship to corporeal reality. Well, actually that last part isn’t exactly true, but they definitely functioned more like mortal humans than like fey. The Night Hag pulled a slow vanishing act, crumpling into an even tighter ball, the contours of her body fading. Her eyes were the last thing to go, crimson orbs filled with fury hanging in the air above Cody’s pillows like the Cheshire cat’s grin, only creepy as hell.

  I was glad when they finally blinked out of existence. Now that it was over, the adrenaline rush that had sustained me drained away, leaving me wobbly and shaken. I sat down abruptly on the edge of Cody’s bed.

  “Good job, Daisy,” Cody said quietly. “How are you, really?”

  “I don’t know.” I glanced down at my trembling hands, gouged and scratched by the Night Hag’s teeth and nails. “A little shaky.”