“Care to share, Prince?”
Next to me, Liam laughed.
From the darkened doorway, a shrouded figure emerged—a woman—in tattered clothes and skin so gray and withered, she looked as if she were drawn in charcoal.
“So fresh she is, sire. Just a small touch for a tired old hollow? A quick nip before she rots.” She stepped through the doorway, peeling the long black gloves from her hands.
Liam shouted back—harsh, unkind words that made the woman stoop down and fall to her knees. Her expression was full of anguish, and her shoulders trembled as she laid her face against the filthy ground.
“What does she want?” I couldn’t help asking.
The sight of her old face touching the ground made a sharp ache bloom inside my chest. Was she hungry? What did she need? I quickly turned around, spying the rest of the lost souls out in the street. I was right. They were all stationary, quietly staring in some death-like trance at me.
I whirled around, facing Liam. “What does that woman want?” I demanded.
“You.” He smiled.
The woman whispered something, and my eyes darted back to her. She was smiling now too, exposing a mouthful of rotten teeth. “Just a small taste, sweet girl.”
An explosion of noise and chaos erupted from a dark alleyway next to us. A flood of shattered glass poured out over the cobblestones, and mist swirled in ghostly curtains toward us. The dead scattered, leaving me and Liam alone in the descending fog.
Then a deep voice called out Liam’s name. I recognized it instantly, causing an angry wave of heat to flush through my body. “That’s your brother, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Come, hurry. I need to take you back to your room.” He jogged through a dark alley and into a thick group of brambles and trees. I hesitated, then followed slowly, deliberately decreasing my pace to fall behind.
Why would he take me back to my room? Wasn’t he supposed to hide me somewhere from the king? Why would that woman want to taste me? I shouldn’t follow him. I shouldn’t trust anyone.
When I reached the darkest part of the wood, I stopped completely and pressed myself against the darkened shadows of the widest tree trunk.
“Rainey?” Liam whispered out.
I remained silent, but even hidden in-between the trees, I knew I was not alone and I hadn’t much time before I was found. Squatting low, I searched for a branch or rock to protect myself with. There would be nobody here who would be taking my warmth or pleasuring me with their dead parts, or tasting me, or whatever the hell these crazy dead people did, that I was sure of. Why did someone say I had to hide? Someone took me out of the restraints the king’s guards put me in and left me out alone in the woods under the care of Madden, the jerkoff.
Why did Mathias want me gone?
Gone as in dead? Or gone as in any place but here?
Why did Liam want me back in my room?
The pulse in my neck drummed hard against my skin. I needed to calm down before I gave myself an aneurysm, but my brain wouldn’t stop. I felt like I was in this place for years now and I still had no answers, just more questions.
Why did that old bat look at me like I was filet mignon?
What did she mean before I rot? Was I going to rot here?
And what the hell was my grandmother doing here?
“Rainey,” Liam called out again. This time his voice was closer, on the other side of the tree. “Oh, sweet, sumptuous bag of flesh. You do love to play games, don’t you?”
Ew. Just, no. Sweet, sumptuous bag of flesh? I was still hunched over, desperate to find something to hit him with, when something above me shifted. My head snapped up, searching for what it was. Something warm and hopeful passed through a break in the tree branches and earth above my head—like the light of a small candle—sending a muted glow across the ground. A low, metallic gong cried out repeatedly. I counted six times. It was a clock! Somewhere, a clock struck six.
Liam stepped out then, his form a transparent haze reaching out for me until he dissolved altogether and just the small shuffle of his feet and thin shadow of what he just was slid across the brambles and branches until it seeped completely into the earth and I stood alone in the darkness.
“I need to have you,” his voice whispered hoarsely. “And soon you’ll see you won’t be able to resist.”
Yeah, over my dead body.
Chapter 15
Even surrounded by a city of dead people, I was probably the most restless spirit there. My mind was a hamster wheel, and I was spinning around madly inside it, trying to rationalize what was happening to me. The first and most important conclusion I came to was simple. This shit was real—all of it—it had to be. I wanted to believe otherwise. I wanted it to be some sort of drug-induced dream, but I got high a few times as a teen, and this was nothing like that.
Another conclusion I reached: Those ghostly-creature-lost-soul-whatever-they-were-things faded when the clock struck six. They came back too, hours later, probably when the world above slept, but I wasn’t too sure about the particulars. Not yet.
What I was positive about, when I stepped my feet back onto the flat slabs of stone of the gardens of the monstrous castle that loomed above me, was for a few hours I’d have the freedom to search the shit out of the place for answers.
I swung the giant wooden doors open with a vengeance. Inside, the stone walls were lit with the peculiar, white flaming torches I was getting quite used to seeing, as if someone expected my return. Grabbing one, I began my investigation.
I wandered the halls, tearing apart every room I saw. There were hundreds of rooms, maybe more than hundreds—filled with blood-soaked sheets, old books, and decay. The kitchen housed a massive hearth and a wooden block table piled high with rusted caldrons and cast iron pans. A mess of rotted food coated every surface, in some places so decomposed, it flaked off to ash.
One long corridor curled into a large parlor with half a wall crumbled to rocks and dust. On the very top of the pile lay a painted portrait of the brothers, Mathias and Liam. They looked out over a bleak landscape, their eyes filled with despair, and a raven circling overhead.
This must have been their living quarters.
There was a soft sigh as I stepped through the room, a moan that tickled the hair from the top of my forehead to the small of my neck, crawling down my spine like a long-legged spider. I hurried through, opening one of the two doors along the farthest wall.
A bedroom.
Sheer curtains—that might have once been white—rippled toward me without a hint of a breeze warning me away. I leaned heavily against the doorframe, forcing myself to hold my ground.
“Someone doesn’t want me in their tomb?” I called out. I couldn’t tell which brother's room it was, but I was sure neither of them would want me to be there, snooping around.
A great wrought iron bed took up the center of the room. Threadbare strips of material hung limply from its canopy, and soft gray feathers spilled from its bottom.
The torch I held gave off very little light, casting only an eerie glow over all the room’s debris. A deep sadness cleaved to every surface like inch-thick dust. On an antique writing table sat a stack of books and large black feather. Besides them, as I leaned forward, I found inked sketches of midnight colored ravens and a dark-haired girl with no face. I glanced quickly over everything when my eye caught the glint of a sword resting against the side of the desk. I kicked the sword, and it thudded mutely to the worn rug, in case it was Mathias’s.
“Asshole,” I muttered aloud.
I tiptoed over everything, touching everything, yet nothing at all. The pages of the books stuck together, and a thin film of slime coated my fingers after.
How could anyone bear this? This limbo. This nothingness.
A chill ran through my body. I feared if I stayed here, I would be sucked under the heaviness that blanketed this long forsaken palace.
I couldn’t imagine how they’ve stayed here, with life going on abov
e them somewhere. Couldn’t imagine how it felt—the horror of it—of never be able to move on from there. Would the bitterness dull with time—or would it fester and build itself into something monstrous and vile?
Another low sob broke through the quiet, and a sudden and awful sorrow washed over me. It rooted deep inside my heart and tore through me like a gunshot, compressing my organs, lungs—heart—brain, leaving a white-hot fire in my chest. I couldn’t move. I could barely think. A catastrophic grief clawed through my skin, peeling away any happiness or hope. I struggled against it, squeezing my eyes shut to the horrible sense of emptiness before me.
The overwhelming despair was crushing.
I screamed out, clutching my sides, trying to ease the pain that ripped through my body.
No one came.
There was absolutely nothing around me or inside me that had any hope.
“This place is awful,” I sobbed, steadying myself against the wall to help remain upright.
A soft mumble answered me. I couldn’t make out a word—just a sound—a sound that someone was there with me. “Get me out of here,” I choked.
There was a footstep, somewhere behind me, back in the hallway.
I pulled myself from the room, my skin dripping with sweat and slicked with sadness.
Another footstep, above me on a winding staircase made of dark liquid stones.
It was something to focus on.
Something to chase after, so I ran. Up and up and up. Trying to put as much space I could between me and that all-consuming hollow feeling of complete nothingness. The staircase spiraled, higher and higher. My legs burned and my chest ached, but something was above me, pulling me like a magnet.
The steps, cracked and cratered, ended at a narrow door. It was held shut with a rusted lock that dangled from a loose nail. I stood panting, wheezing and cursing myself for my lack of stair climbing skills. I felt like vomiting.
I closed my eyes and breathed a ragged inhale and held it for a few seconds before blowing it out slow and steady. My heart hammered hard.
An icy wind drifted from behind me as if pushing me inside. There was something behind the door. Something terrifying and pulsing, yet I felt as if I’d die if I didn’t get inside. This place was all consuming, everything filling you with terror and then leaving you so lost and alone and wrung out dry.
I kicked the door open, hoping for the element of surprise in case something was inside, but the room was empty save for the oldest grand piano I'd ever laid eyes on. Some of the ivory was broken, and my heart ached for the poor, abandoned instrument.
What would it be doing here? The place was like a shadow of the real world. There was everything that was in my world but broken and useless and rotten. Food that held no taste. Trees that held no leaves. Sky that had no sun or moon. Things that have no color. Decay that, thank God, had no smell. People who had no lives— everything was faded like it was all shadows of everything that was supposed to be.
I walked closer to the instrument, wondering again how it might have come to be here.
How did anything come to be here?
I tapped the c, closing my eyes. One tiny note whispered out from the top, weak and afraid. But the sound reverberated through my hand, rolling an electric swell of fire under my skin from the tips of my nails to the top of my shoulder. I pulled my finger away slowly, and a thick gray ash covered its tip.
I quickly looked around the room for something to wipe away the grit that covered the keys. Along the back wall, an old wooden bench stood with a tattered rag on top.
How very convenient.
“Am I supposed to play?” I asked, feeling a sudden urgency to do so. I surveyed the room, waiting for an answer or a sign.
There was nothing, nothing but the flicker of the torches that soundlessly danced shadows throughout the room.
I dragged the bench to the piano, trailing parallel lines through the dirt that covered the floor and used the rag to clean whatever gunk I could from the off the keys and surface of the seat.
I hadn’t played since that night in the bar on Bourbon Street when I thought I was too old for fairy tales until I followed a jackass right into one.
The thing about fairy tales was, you were shit out of luck if you were one of the ugly-stepsisters or any of the other secondary characters who were easily forgotten about. I didn’t want to be stuck here with my story left untold.
The pads of my fingers touched down, electric tingles of fire snapped through my wrists. I closed my eyes, wondering what I should play. Maybe something beautiful. Perhaps something to persuade the ugliness of this place to fear its rival.
Would the ghosts stir with music? Would they wake and dance around the room?
Slowly, I moved my fingers. Notes whispered out, falling against the cold stone walls like rain in a desert. I felt the world around me soak them in, each and every chord I made. The music came out of me in waves, slow at first, vulnerable and new, drawing out a sense of sadness that mirrored my surroundings.
I let the sounds spill over me carving words and scars under my skin. A shiver slipped down the back of my shirt, changing the music without thought or reason, just feeling, a desperate urgency that roused my blood, pulsing and rushing it everywhere all at once—my throat, my chest, deep in my stomach, exploding heat between my thighs—a rhythm that resounded over and over me, entirely.
For the briefest moment, I felt my grandmother in the room, the way she suddenly had to vacuum around me whenever I played in the house. Was it my imagination? There were so many things I wanted to ask her, was I projecting the memory on myself?
That’s when the piano top slammed down on my hands and the wind around me hissed out, “You mustn’t play.”
I pulled my hands to my chest and flinched back, the tips of my fingers throbbing with phantom pain. I looked around for an apparition, a spirit or wisp of a life, but the room was empty, the air frosty and everything around me long dead and gone.
“Why?” I called out, pushing off the bench. “Why can’t you face me and tell me why you hid all this from me? Who killed you?” I stood rooted to the ground between the piano and the door.
“Grandmother? Addy? That’s your name, right?” I whirled around, anger bubbling in my chest. “Or how about I call you liar. Fake. Bitch. What was I to you? Who am I?”
Just like always, there were no answers. She was gone, only the faint sound of footfalls descending the stairs. I stormed out of the room, desperate to catch a glimpse of whatever I could.
But there was nothing I could see as the door slammed shut behind me.
A single tear trailed down my cheek, and I angrily swiped it away. I would get myself out of there. I didn’t need my lying grandmother. I had already spent most of my life being ignored by her, which was excellent training for the utter loneliness I was shackled with now. Next time I saw her, I should thank her—because of her neglect—I was strong and very used to doing everything on my own.
I stomped down the steps, muttering and grumbling under my breath. How long would I have to stay here?
The lower the stairs sloped, the darker the spiraling stairwell became. I bypassed all the floors I visited before and continued down through the blackness until there was nowhere left for me to go.
There, at the very bottom of the last step lay a long, narrow hall with one door in the very middle of it. I stood in front of the door and flicked my eyes both ways down the corridor. Again, I was totally alone.
“No stupid dead people to stop me from going in this room!” I called over my shoulder as I opened the door.
A rush of warm light spilled over me. The door had opened into a cavernous room filled with flicking lights from floor to vaulted ceiling. They were jars. Hundreds of glass jars perched atop each other, sparkling with dancing lights like soft yellow flames.
I gasped out loud, my hands clutching at the collar of my shirt. It was beautiful, whatever it was. I stepped in closer to the glow, feeling warmth for
the first time in days.
The glowing embers flared brighter with each step I took toward them. Their heat sent my heart careening against my rib cage. All my flesh and my nerves, every one of my cells seemed to come alive from its beauty, music seemed to hum deep inside me. My eyes welled with tears, and my breath was stolen from my lungs. It was an overwhelming feeling that I was home, feeling no longer alone, like I was connected to each small twinkle of fire, bonded to them like they were the air I needed to breathe.
Each flame sung out to me, filling me with warmth and love. I felt manic almost—able to accomplish anything—but not able to move my feet.
I reached out for the loudest light. It bounced madly inside its jar, making the glass pulse and vibrate. My hands felt the smooth, hot glass, an inferno that burned to the very marrow of my bones, a fire so great, nothing could ever extinguish.
“No!” a voice shouted out.
I fell back, fumbling to steadying myself as a wall of ice propelled me back, away from the shiny new toys.
“Get back! You don’t know what this is!” the voice growled.
I blinked fast, heart almost leaping right out of my mouth. Mathias’s ethereal form hovered in front of the jars. His wraith-like shadow, angry and menacing, streaked around me in a cold blast of gossamer waves. “Leave! Now!” Mathias shouted at me, shoving me from the room with a blast of frosty wind.
I couldn’t protect myself. There was nothing to him. When I held my hands up and out, they flew right through him. It felt like I was shoving my arms in cobwebs.
“Leave!” A flash of rage washed over his translucent face. It made him look alive and vibrant.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to stay and fight back and touch each one of the warm jars and hold them to my chest. But the glacial air forcing me back bit sharply into my skin, so bitter and cold it burned. A searing pain that ate at every inch of my skin.
I ran out. I ran through the long corridor and back up the curling staircase. I ran until the sound of the wind chimes swept softly through the air and the shadows of people came alive and walked the stone floors, roaming dead around me.
Ravenswood (Ravenswood Series Book 1) Page 12
