by S L Mason
Kicking my foot out, I hum at the silk, hoping to break it, but to no avail.
I’ve always been told spider silk was one of the strongest fibers on the planet. That, pound for pound, it is stronger than steel. This was mega-mondo silk. I’m so fucked. The pulling and yanking causes my ankle to pop any moment it will dislocate and I’ll be really screwed. With my free hand I pull a finger blade from my bodice and toss it up the stairs, then sing a bit from a James Bond movie, Tom Jones was always one of my favorites. I picture the knife slicing the silk threat. To my delight it does and I snap free in an instant, reaching the bottom of the stairs. An arched with a door nestled in it, without another thought I’m through and forcing it shut.
No sooner did I begin the locking song and the door pushes open. Screaming, I put another burst of energy into the shove, already in motion. One of the appendages pierces the heavy door. I pull another knife and stab it. A cutting scream comes through from the other side and it rears back. I slam it shut and sing the lock home only taking a breath when I hear the click.
I turn and lean my head against the heavy wooden door. Whistling a protection seal over the opening, I bent over to catch my breath and survey my surroundings.
I’m awake, now where the fuck am I?
CHAPTER 21
The hallway goes one direction, so I head down the dimly lit corridor, embracing the shadows lining the walls. Cobwebs line the hallway and linger in the archways. Some doors still hang in their frames, and others lay on their side. A few are angled away from what was once their home. All carry the silvery white of long-dead wood weathered by sun and sea.
Much of the structure is cracked or split. Dust trickles down from the upper beams. I’m unable to discern whether an upper floor exists, or the dust is caused by nothing more than my passage disturbing the air.
A high creak cuts the otherwise dead calm, followed by a click.
I freeze in place and hum a shadow around me while pressing my back to the wall.
I spy movement— a shadow flickers back and forth as a girl passes through the dim Fae light. Her white hair reflects the day-glo colors as rainbows shoot over the dingy surfaces.
I turn and glance over my shoulder, the hallway ends at my tower door. There’s no way I’m going back that direction.
The girl turns the only corner off the long avenue. I watch the wake waves; other than her passing all is quiet on the western front.
Tiptoeing down the hallway, I follow the shadows, leaving no dust trail behind. I might have to kill her. I don't want to kill, but this is a kill-or-be-killed scenario. Who am I kidding, this place is filled with predators. I can’t be the only one? I am a predator, I’ve killed. I clench my teeth, pressing my lips flat. Whatever I do, it’s for everyone.
Even as I let the justification fill my mind, I am not sure it’s right. I reach back and scratch at the bulge on my back. My nerves make it vibrate with movement.
The corner looms in my vision and I press my body flat to the wall as I inch up to the edge. The groan of dry old wood breaks the silence of my cat-and-mouse game. I wait for the patter of footsteps to drift away before I make a move.
I dart a glance around the corner, and lingering in a doorway poised and ready to strike stands a vapid willowy, Fae-looking Camille.
I press my head back against the wall and stare up at the ceiling. Why did it have to be Camille? Why can’t be any other sort of human girl?
If I enchant her, maybe I can slip by and be done with it. My whistle of enchantment fills the air, only to be cut off by dry laughing.
Camille calls out, "Whoever you are I’m too Fae for that to work anymore. Show me who you are and let’s get this over with." She steps out from the shadowy doorway, standing between me and my objective.
In her taunting, oh-so-familiar voice, Camille continues, "Are you scared? Worried you can't take me? I’m as well-trained as the next contender, you might have a chance. After all, aren’t we all human?" She smiles.
A high-pitched sound whizzes past my face, followed by a loud thump. A bolt from a crossbow lodges itself in the wall next to my head.
"Awe, I almost hit you. You look familiar, do I know you?" Camille inquires.
Leaping to my full height, I charge her.
"I guess this is a fight I've been expecting," I say.
A smile sneers half her face. “Oh yeah, I’ve been waiting for this. Little miss perfect, are you ready to meet your maker, Sarah? I’ve been wanting to kick your ass for years." She sprints, launching both feet at me and collides with my chest, forcing all the air from my lungs.
Recoiling from the impact, I slam into the far wall. My head makes a sickening smack on the stone, then I slide to the floor and stare up at Camille's shadowed face.
“Statistically I'm due for a win, and I feel lucky.” Her lips pull back in a macabre smile. I haul my arm over my torso just before she stomps a foot down on top of it. She tugs a knife from a sheath on her bodice and smiles at the metallic twang it makes. Then, flexing her shoulders, she raises her arm to strike.
“Do you want to know what happened to Brad?” I sputter.
Her arm freezes its downward thrust.
I'm buying time to make the stars go away, blinking to push the mist back.
“Brad's dead, I killed him in the enchanted bubble,” Camille says and falters, and her lip trembles before she presses them together into a thin line.
I rush into the gap, trying to keep her thinking and off guard. “Brad isn't dead, I took him back to the surface myself. Before the enchanted bubble. The bubble wasn't real.” My words work their way around inside my head. She saw Brad and killed him, but he wasn't there. What did that mean for Nick? I shove that out of my mind. I don't have time for that.
I press myself up off the floor to face her. “Nicely played, Sarah, using my emotions against me. Brad's dead. He attacked me and I killed him. I didn’t want to, but it was him or me.” She releases a crazed snicker. Her eyes are filled with wild hysteria as the color changes, shifting from one to another.
I need to get away from crazy Camille.
Her arm cuts down in a flash. I catch her hand, holding the tip of the blade inches away from my breastbone.
“Die, like all the rest, just die.” Her other hand curls around the pommel of the hilt. Her eyes are wide and wild as the muscles in her neck and shoulders strain against my continued resistance. Taking a light breath so as not to telegraph my next move, I pull a dagger from my bodice and stab it into her side.
Camille cries out, “You dirty bitch!” Tears fill her eyes as her free hand pulls the blade from her torso with a sick sucking sound.
With both hands, I push the dagger pointed at my chest off course and release my grip. It digs into a seam between two stones and lodges itself there. But her body keeps going. I slip away from her, only to watch in horror as she slams into the small dagger still held in her hand. The blade pierces her skin, burying itself deep in her belly.
An agonizing scream cut the hallway in half and Camille slides down the stone wall, leaving a bloody trail behind before she lands face first on the floor.
With a horror-filled realization, I scamper back to her side— my numb fingers work to turn her over.
She coughs, and blood-filled spittle edges her lips. “Why can’t I win?” she mutters.
Blood pours from the gash in her belly. My finger dagger is nowhere to be seen. I press my hand over the opening. Camille coughs again and her innards threaten to slip between my fingers like wet ropes. Closing my eyes, I swallow back the saliva pooling in my mouth.
This isn't what I want. I thought Camille and I would go off to college and see each other at school reunions or on Twitter feeds. I don’t want her dead, not really.
Opening my eyes, I survey the slowing rise and fall of her chest. “Camille.” I shake her. “Look at me! I can’t heal you unless you let me. Sing with me.”
Her eyes slowly focus on me. “You can’t heal me, you have
to love me for that. A Fae told me so. You hate me.” Her eyes roll around and back into her head. I can’t say I love her— I don’t. We fought our entire childhood. Always exchanging verbal blows. Until today, though, we had never hit each other.
Janice said you had to care. I cared, I did. I hope it’s enough. “I do care, Camille, so help me.”
Her eyes blink, refocusing on me. “I wish this had never happened. I’d still be with Brad.” She whispers her desire as the tears run down the sides of her cheeks, creating dust-free streams. “I love Brad, but I never told him. He put up with all my crap, and I don’t know why. Then I killed him, I didn’t want to.” Blood escapes the side of her lips to run down to her neck and into the once-blond-but-now-white Fae hair.
Leaning over, I kiss her forehead.
At least she’d been loved. Brad loved her, I know he did. I watched the way Brad’s eyes followed her as if there was only one sun and it shone with her. I’d been jealous of it.
My eyes burn with tears I can never shed. I pet Camille’s hair back from her forehead, wiping away the remands of my bloody kiss. I can do this.
The rumble begins in my chest, spreading out and surrounding Camille. In the background, Camille hums sad and broken notes. But my magic overwhelms hers and we join, creating a common bond that wakes over her. I watch as it dives in, swirling like a mixing bowl to rearrange the broken and repair the damage.
The first cry rips from Camille, then another. Her body withers in pain, twisting one way then the other.
Pulling air in through my nose, I push it out on a song through my mouth. My eyes train on her stomach. One side of my dagger’s handle peeks out of her flesh. The magic wakes eject the foreign object.
As soon as the handle is free, I yank it free of her flesh. My singing reaches a crescendo. The wound knits the gash closed. Camille cries, clawing at me, each note reaching a new pain level. I find new heights on each verse until I’m certain she is completely healed. I watch in fascination, her hair changes from white to dark blond. Her face rounds out with those human features I grew up with.
I allow the magic to drift away on ever-diminishing wake waves. Camille stops moving. Feeling for a pulse, I find one—slow and steady.
Wiping my hands on her shirt, I stand up. The hall holds several doors, so I move to the closest and yank it open. The dust on the floor is undisturbed, and no cobwebs line the corners or windows.
Whistling Camille into a floating lump, I pull her inert form into the room and move her to a side wall.
I hum the rotting tapestries hanging by the window down from their wooden rings. I drag one over and ball it under her head, and the other I lay over her body.
Camille's eyes flutter open. “Sarah, I'm hungry.” She mutters.
I laugh.
“Yeah, I was too after I was healed. Takes a lot out of you. Listen, you need to stay here quietly.” She smacks her lips, and I whistle up some water in my hand and give her a sip.
I push her hair back from her forehead, revealing a rounded, human-looking ear.
“You look different, I can’t see the magic anymore. Does this mean I can go home?”
I shake my head. “I don't know. But if you lay here a while I’ll try to send you home.”
She smiles, and her eyes drift shut. I step back and sing the enchanting song, locking her into a lost bubble of time; she won't age or die until someone finds her. Then lean out of the doorway, and whistle the rocky rubble littering the hall up into the air and move them into the room, keeping my eyes off the pool of blood on the floor.
Camille resembles Snow White lying in wait for her prince. I gather the dusty rubble into a pasty puddle on the floor and begin stacking stones.
My intent is to wall her in. If they don't know she's here, they won’t bother her. Taking one last look at her sleeping face, I lodged the last stone in place. Within minutes I have closed her off from the world.
Stopping only for a moment at the door, I look back. If I don't win, she'll lie there for all time. Taking a deep breath, I leave the room. All the more reason to end this. As if I don’t have enough to carry around.
I turn the corner of the hall, only to find more hallways leading off into a distant unknown. Once again I pick my way around, searching my surrounding for wake waves that didn't belong.
I meet only ordinary stones and long-forgotten castle rot.
Arched doorways lead to multitudes of rooms in varying states of decay. Finally, I come to a stairwell. Twisting down into the shadowy depths, I follow the turning until it come to an end.
The archer windows are my only clue to the outside world, but my eyes only meet more air with more towers off in distance. I press my face to the side in an attempt to gauge height. Other than a best guess, I could be ten stories or forty, I can’t tell. The ground is still a long way off.
CHAPTER 22
The stairs take me to a new passageway extending to nowhere.
Lovely.
The walls lining the hallway lay on their sides as if a child had knocked them all down in a haphazard fashion. I move around what I can and climb over several. The groaning of the structure meets my every step. The stone weakly wake back to me, warning of their impending failure.
My senses scream to get out of here. But there is nowhere to go except straight ahead. I trudge on, floating over any area where wakes hardly register. The scent of dust and mold lingers in the air.
Fae always smells of flowers, a thick drugging perfume of it. The air here is gritty. Cupping my hand, I hum water into it and quickly gulp it away. I rub the leftover moisture from my hand on the sleeve of my shirt.
The room shifts and I stumble to the left. Rubble shifts around me and the sound of tumbling rocks is followed by a crunching footfall.
The sound of lips smacking together is my first warning. A long sucking snort is followed by a throat clearing hack and a deep breath. The spit is hurled against the wall two feet from where I am concealed by fallen debris. I watch the green globby mess slide down the stony edifice.
A grunt followed by a juicy fart completes the picture of nasty.
“Is that end clear? We can’t miss one. This may be our last chance.” A raspy voice inquires.
“No, I haven’t checked the stairs, but I need a piss first. Don’t worry, if we get them all, wild gets to continue ruling and so do we.” The reply comes out wet with smacking lips. A steaming stream of urine spouts from above, arching over the rockpile to splatter on the floor a few inches from my shoes. Little drops splash back, landing on my boots and leggings. The heavy scent of ammonia and copper fills the air.
I cover my mouth to keep from gagging, pulling my magical shadow cloak tighter with a light rumble from my throat.
“Did you hear that?” smacking lips inquires.
“No. Now finish up, we need to move closer to the ground. Wild will get them if we don’t,” Thirsty retorts.
I listen to the rock-crushing footsteps retreating, following every groan of the building.
I hope it doesn’t fall down while I’m crouching next to the piss puddle.
Silence rules once again, and I move from my hiding place. I pick my way over the rocks along the wall. The rubble hides their footprints. I came to a T, but neither hall looks any safer than the other. The walls wake back a disturbance to the left while the right is dead as a doornail.
Left it is.
They said they needed to reach the ground floor. I probably don’t have a drop of human left in me. The Fae side has taken over raising my senses. Now, when hair rose on the back of my neck, I don’t shake it away. A rock rolls behind me, and I dart a glance back. A magic wake follows a line through an arched doorway as if someone darted out of sight. I'm being followed, great.
I press against the wall as flat as paper. Inching down the wall, I see a large pile of debris covering the hall from wall to wall. Something red bobs in and out of sight just on the other side.
Off in the distance, a scream
breaks the silent peace, then another more terrified than the first. A huffing laugh followed by smacking lips wakes into my back.
My heart picks up speed to race faster with every breath, making me whip my head one way then the other. I can’t go back, and forward is the screaming.
I moisten my lips and whistle rocks into the air. At the same time, I hurl them behind me and make a mad dash to the rubble. I crest the top in time to catch a glimpse of a small goblin-like creature wearing a dripping red hat and thick leather boots. He carries a large meat cleaver in one hand and scratches his exposed plumber’s crack with the other.
The floor groans and shifts, straining with the change in weight and movement. One moment it is groaning, and the next I watch in horror as a giant section of the floor falls, leaving behind a gaping hole. Dust plumes press into every corner, blocking my vision. Another creaking groan comes along with a crashing of stones, and my firm footing turns into the world tilting at a 45-degree angle. I never knew you could surf with stone, but the narrow stone I was standing on slides down onto the next floor. All I can do is keep my balance and footing. Rocks and pebbles pelt me from behind. My stone surfboard becomes a tilt-a-whirl, and I slip off and slam into edge of the gaping crevasse teetering there before sliding down to the next level.
Instinctively, I cradle my arms around my head, protecting my newly healed face. A hollow boom followed by a screaming squeak of wood pulling apart tears the air. The choking dust finds its way into my nose and mouth, coating my tongue with grit. Running my tongue around the inside of my mouth to gather saliva, I spit the gritty chunks of rubble away. The floor shifts again, and I shift with it on to my back. My head cracks against the cold unforgiving stone.
I blink back the stars in my eyes, then feel for the tender spot on the back of my skull. My fingers probe, but came back dry—there would be no tell-tale mushrooms to mark my presences.
The sound of smacking lips slips past me under the dusty cover.
