Ravenswood (Ravenswood Series Book 1)

by Christine Zolendz

  Then faintly, through the opaque fog, I saw a shadowy figure, tall and broad. It came from nothing, really; it simply appeared, as if stepping over a threshold, between one shadow and the next.

  A crowned silhouette gazed through the shapeless mist, cloaked in a long, dark cape. His features were eclipsed by shadows with dark wisps of hair dancing out behind him from under the circlet adorning his head.

  Around him, two more shapes began to coalesce, thick and broad, regal and tall, with long, sharp swords jutting out from their hips. As they shifted closer to the assembly, everyone bowed their heads.

  Not me, though. I wouldn’t look away.

  I was sick and tired of not knowing what was going on.

  The men walked to the middle of the stone yard, speaking quietly to themselves. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see clearly, when recognition hit me like a punch to my throat. It was Mathias and Liam, and someone else I'd yet to meet. They were dressed like royalty. Like royalty from another time.

  Something dark and sinister fell over the crowd. People next to me, in front of me, all around me began trembling, shifting uneasily over the dusty ground. A garble of low whispered sobs bleated out into the mist. Was it fear? Why would they bow to someone they fear? I remember Gram bowing her head in church, praying in Latin or whatever language she spoke, but I never saw this sort of allegiance before, this kind of hair-raising piety. Rose yanked hard on my wrist with one hand while her other tried forcing my head down. I fought against her, thrusting with all my might to shove her away from me.

  The struggling caused me to stumble out into the pathway the men were walking on.

  All three froze, an abrupt stillness that drew my eyes up to look at them. My breath quickened at what I found in their eyes—death—dull, flat, and beyond emotion. Their expressions, cold and distant. Mathias’s, the worst. It made my skin crawl.

  But I held their gaze.

  “What is this little morsel?” the man in the middle asked. His crown was covered in sharp silver spikes and muted gray skulls.

  “No one,” Mathias growled. “Look at her father. She’s doesn’t even look like an upsider. Just more filth, really.”

  My face heated, but I refused to drop my gaze. I don’t care what this man thinks of me.

  Liam smiled, something sizzling alive in his onyx eyes. “Oh no, brother, she is…”

  Mathias slammed his gloved hand over his shoulder hard, stopping him from finishing his thoughts. Liam’s lips tightened into a fierce white line, his eyes like daggers toward the hand gripping strongly at his shoulder.

  “You won’t bow your head to me?” the older man asked, taking a step closer.

  “Not likely, no.”

  His eyes fell on the swell of my breasts in the horrible dress. I instantly felt bare, beyond naked, as if my skin was being turned inside out.

  “Is your skin as smooth as it looks?” he whispered. He leaned in close, his lips inches from mine, dead eyes watching me with some strange otherworldly curiosity. “Are you still warm, I wonder? How long have you been dead?”

  I’m not dead. I’m not dead. “But I’m not de—“

  “Enough!” Mathias roared, stepping in front of me. His eyes were feral, and I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from screaming back. His glare ferocious enough, my body stepped back in defense.

  I hate him so much, I can hardly breathe.

  “Trust me, Father. She’s nothing special.” Mathias was too close to me when he spoke the words. They rattled my chest with irrational rage.

  The king smirked toward Mathias, then slowly drifted his dead, vacant eyes back on mine. “Still. I feel her warmth from here, and I want it. Her blush alone could start a fire.” He waved his hand in a small curling gesture in my direction and barked, “Guards.”

  My cheeks flamed hotter.

  “Grab her,” I heard someone say behind me. My arms were suddenly pinned against my back and a strangely curved knife pressed high along my throat. The shape of it, the way its rusted serrated edge arced into a curl started a pit of fire in my stomach.

  That’s how they described the weapon that butchered my grandmother.

  “What kind of a knife—”

  My words garbled and died as a rag was shoved into my mouth, along with someone’s thick, filthy gloved fingers. I gagged on the fabric, and the stench of the man’s sulfuric, leathered hands.

  Dead-eyed men surrounded me, shackling my arms and legs together. Their eyes lingered on mine, on my skin, my breasts—their covered hands squeezing and touching every inch of me not covered, and I bent forward, struggling to get away. The makeshift muzzle touched the back of my throat, and I choked back vomit, desperately trying to push the material forward with my tongue. Strands of my hair got ripped out as someone tied the constraint at the back of my head.

  “Stupid. Stupid girl.” Mathias’s voice was hot and sharp, cutting at my heart.

  My eyes filled with hot tears, and my nose stung with pain. I can’t cry. I know I need to stop myself, if I cry I’ll suffocate. My feet got kicked out from underneath me, and my body dragged along the icy frost on the ground. I couldn’t see where they were taking me; all I had in my view was the glare of Mathias, his brows pinched into the middle of his forehead and hate boiling in his eyes. His fists were clenched at his sides so tightly, his gloved knuckles turned a brittle white. That’s when I decided: he’ll be the first one I kill in this city of the dead.

  Chapter 14

  I must have passed out. When I opened my eyes, I was dizzy and the world tilted my head toward the ground. Nothing but a thick white fog loomed over me. I tried to stand but fell twice, my head and shoulders too cumbersome to hold up. My stomach soured and cramped from the vertiginous swirl of my surroundings.

  My eyes fixed on the tall trees, focusing on the crisscross of the mangled branches until the swaying of my brain lessened. I concentrated on the iciness of the ground, how cold it was through my clothing, waiting for the nausea to subside, enough so I felt confident I wouldn’t be vomiting.

  Gingerly, I pushed off the soft dirt, standing up, cautiously pulling my legs and feet beneath me. I whirled around, spinning in a tight circle, eyes wide.

  Where was I? There’s nothing but fog and that strange fluttery snow.

  I looked down and touched the white snow that fell through the fog-like soft feathers. It wasn’t cold, but almost cold. I pinched a finger full and brought it closer to my face, rubbing it between my thumb and index finger. It coated my skin like fine powder.

  “What the—” I gasped, then gasped again as I heard myself speak. I touched my fingers to my lips and felt utter relief. The gag was gone. “Hello?” I called out.

  My voice didn’t echo like I thought it would; it fell flat and small. I didn’t see anyone, but the sensation of something watching me was overwhelming. It sent a ripple of puckered skin up my arms and a tingle of sharp needles at the base of my spine.

  Shadows, dark and sinister, drifted from tree to tree, wraith-like through the mist. Terror gripped me, rooting my feet in place, and I caught myself praying—something I hadn’t done in a long time. Perfectly still, I tried to listen for the sound the shadows made, yet this world was bleached white of any noise. It was disorienting, the silence, like my ears were overstuffed with cotton balls.

  My eyes darted over the details of the trees, the strange dark ridges of the bark like hand-painted scrollwork, and the long thick branches that twisted upward, ending like sharp, pointed claws. As I drew my attention over the landscape, a dark, familiar face appeared through a swirl of fog.

  “Madden,” I breathed, my pulse thickening and battering the back of my throat.

  “I’m to hide you until you’re forgotten about,” his voice said softly. “Until the King has been given a new upsider, at least.”

  “Madden, you have to tell me what’s happening. You have to tell me what this place really is—because I’m—I’m losing it.” My hands wrung at my neck, clasping a
t my grandmother’s charm and I peered down at myself in surprise, realizing I was still wearing that God-awful dress.

  “He told me to keep you hidden, that’s all,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.

  “Who told you to do that? It had to be Liam. He’s the nice brother, right?”

  “Nice brother?” He laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “I told you not to follow me. I warned you. You were never supposed to come back here. Addy told you to stay away.”

  “Come back here? I’ve never been here before! Why don’t you just tell me what this place is? What does any of this have to do with my grandmother? Why wouldn’t she want me here? What is this place? What did she know about it?” I was frantic and two seconds shy of an epic meltdown.

  He stepped closer, his voice turning into a whisper. “I can’t tell you anything; they’ll know.”

  “Are they all really dead? Are you dead?” I asked cautiously.

  “Yes.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper fighting against wind, but it was strong enough to make my knees weaken and drop me to the ground, the skirts of the atrocious dress fanning out around me.

  “I’ll take her from here, ferryman. Go upside, and know your soul,” a new voice called out from behind us.

  “But I was told to—”

  “I know what you were told, and now I’m telling you to leave. Go!” the voice spat.

  Madden looked stricken, backing up quickly into the dense fog, disappearing instantly.

  I slowly turned my head to face the voice. Liam stood tall, royal, regal as if he were truly a prince and this wasn’t some fever nightmare. “You’re not real. This place isn’t real. Did my plane crash? Is that it? Did I die on a freaking plane coming down to New Orleans to find my grandmother’s killer?” Giggles bubbled uncontrollably out of my mouth. “Or wait, was I eaten by one of those alligators everybody keeps going on about?”

  Liam offered me a gloved hand. “Allow me to help you stand.”

  The hell I need his dead hand for?

  “Thanks, but no. I don’t want your—“I gestured my hands in air quotes, “cold, dead hands to touch me.”

  “Don’t tease,” he reprimanded, shoving his hand in my face. “I’m here to help you.”

  Sighing, I placed my hand in his, my skin prickling up to the top of my shoulder. He smirked sideways at me as if he knew the disgusted response my body had to his touch. The thought rippled a restless unease inside me.

  He stared down at me with a small tilt to his head, saying nothing. I cleared my throat and carefully climbed to my feet, wiping off the snow-dust that clung to my dress.

  “This dress is really the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. I want regular clothes. Pants. I want pants.”

  “Funny, how undressing you from your gown was the same thought I just had,” he replied with an arrogant smile.

  I pulled my hand out of his and feverishly brushed it against the material at my hip. There was something very wrong about the fact that I could still feel his creepy leather glove on my skin long after it was gone.

  “Well, you could kick that thought right out of your decrepit, lifeless brain.”

  He chuckled with a shake of his head, then waved a hand out in front of us, where a narrow dirt path appeared through a break in the haze. “Come, Rainey. It’s close to dawn, and I need to get you to a safe place.”

  “What happens at dawn?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest and planting my heels in the ground. “I’m not going anywhere unless you start telling me the truth about things. Am I dead?”

  He paused, his entire frame stiffening, and snapped his eyes to mine. If the gesture was meant to warn me about asking questions, I didn’t receive the memo.

  “I’m about to sit my ass back down on the ground and wait until you start talking.”

  “You’re not dead,” he said quickly.

  “But you are?” I asked again—just to be clear.

  “Yes.”

  I blinked, wondering what I should be asking him next. I was a little taken aback by his answer. A dead person—a dead person was talking to me—just me and him having a regular old conversation.

  “How am I here? Where is here? And don’t tell me the city of the dead, because I get the name, but where am I really? And why? How? What happened to my grandmother?” I spoke so fast, I could barely catch my breath, and it didn’t help that the stupid dress was cutting off all the circulation in my lower extremities and I hardly felt my feet. “Start talking. Is this the afterlife? It can’t be heaven.” I laughed bitterly. Oh no, this place had to be Hell. “In all the books I’ve read, Hell was a place of burning fires.”

  There was no warmth here. There was nothing but the emptiness of life, the lack of just everything. Shit. I was in Hell. And somehow my feet where stepping one in front of the other and I was following Liam down a meager walkway through the wispy white gloom of the woods dressed like the Queen of Hearts.

  “This is neither Heaven nor Hell.” His tone was soft, quiet. “Besides, Hell is just a trumped up sauna.”

  I stopped, my feet making a scattering of ashy footprints. “Then enlighten me, please. Stop holding back information and messing around with me. I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana, where it’s constantly snowing. Not real snow, oh no, it’s just cool ash or some crazy radioactive crap falling around us. I was stuffed, literally into this horrible costume like a sausage. I have a dead grandmother and the most important audition of my life coming up, yet I’m here and not allowed to know where here is, so that means I’m in HELL!” I was breathing heavily now, fighting away tears. “And I lost my freaking cell phone.”

  He laughed like I was being funny.

  “Why do we need to get back before dawn? What is this place?” I demanded. “Who are you?”

  The sound of weeping echoed through the mist surrounding us. “We’re lost souls. Restless spirits, long forgotten about.” He walked a few steps and continued. “We wake when the shadows grow long and dark. We’re no more than a thought or a memory when the sun rises.”

  I suddenly became mute. I had nothing. No words. This was a horror movie, and I was the unknowing guest star.

  “This…this…this place is real?”

  “You came through the Hollow, through the underground, where the shadows are the darkest. We have many people try to come; only a few make it inside to Ravenswood, though.”

  “Ra…Ravens…wood?” Great, I was a stuttering mess, incapable of more than one-word questions.

  He grunted as his answer.

  “But what does my grandmother have to do with this place?”

  Around us, the thick gloom gave way to a tall cavern filled with towering roots and packed earth. Two stone ravens stood sentinel atop an old archway we passed under, leading into cobblestones beneath our feet.

  “She once lived here.”

  “She once lived here?” I smiled at how ridiculous it sounded. “That couldn’t be true. She’s lived with me all my life. In New York.”

  He turned to face me, pursing his lips into an awful pout. “How boring to talk about other things besides me.”

  He was like a five-year-old. Okay, I’d bide my time before I could get away or find some sort of a weapon.

  Holy hell, how would I kill someone already dead?

  “Um. Okay. So you were once alive? From where I come from?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know, really. There’s no measurement of time. There’s nothing here. Not until an upsider comes.”

  “How does an upsider come?”

  “The ferrymen brings them. A warm body. For just a few moments, if you lay your skin on theirs, you could feel for just a moment, the warmth of the sun, the beat of a heart, the hum of a soul. Here, we have none.”

  I stepped away, wary.

  His right hand caressed the hilt of the sword that hung from his hip. “I would like to touch you, Rainey. I would love your warmth just for a m
oment. Some women have told me it feels like the most exquisite pleasure they’ve ever known.”

  If I had a dollar for every guy to ever believe they could really pleasure a woman with just their hands, I’d be rich. I couldn’t help laughing. “Riiiight. I’ve heard that before. Never pans out though, really. Not for me.”

  “But I gave my word to my brother.” He sighed, continuing as if he didn’t even hear me. Then his tone became darker and his words angry and curt. “My brother wants you gone.”

  I ignored the remark. I didn’t want to waste time talking about idiots or be warned about idiots who wanted me dead. I needed to find out all the information I could about whatever I could. “Who were the people dancing at the party? In the Hollow?”

  “Upsiders.” He smiled. “Only a few will come through. The ferrymen bring them,” he repeated. “Everyone loves a party.”

  “What happens to them when they get through? What happens to them after you touch them?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure where they go. Whatever place is beyond here.”

  We walked through the underground city, the sky above starless and milky gray. People—lost souls, I guessed—walked the streets, hurrying by, only to falter when they glanced up at me. Their eyes lingered for a few moments, then slid from mine to the ground quickly, and their hushed whispers filled the silent vacuum of the strange city.

  Did they see me fall before the king and get dragged away? Why were they all watching me?

  As we walked farther through the narrow streets, everything behind us suddenly seemed to go completely still and silent. I knew if I turned my head to look, everyone would be frozen in place, watching my every move. It made my spine tingle.

  A low, soft murmur came from a dark, dingy shop filled with barrels piled atop each other—all sporting holes with mist seeping through them. Out beneath its rotten awning, a pile of mason jars were heaped in a small mountain of trash.