Footsteps crashed toward me much faster than I could sprint. If they touched me like they had Ica, that was it.
My ears burned to hear the familiar tremor of the earth when my roots wormed to the surface. But because I was in the Core, it might take time for them to get here. Time I didn’t have. I pumped my legs harder, faster. Without the need for breath, I could go forever. But the stone trees might catch me first.
A faint tremble in the earth gave me a shot of hope, and if I could’ve smiled, I would have. I just hoped my roots were in crushing distance in three, two…
Now, I told them.
I angled to the left sharply and cut away from the trees’ pounding feet. A deafening crash split the air over my shoulder, and out of the corner of my eye, a flash of crimson twisted out of the ground. Crimson, not the usual root brown.
Take them down, I ordered.
As the trees slanted toward me, my red roots coiled around their so-called legs and yanked. Their stone bones cracked, and their broken legs collapsed underneath them. Rock sprayed in every direction as their bodies crumbled with the impact. Branches reached toward me like gnarled fingers until their trunks hit the floor, and then a pile of gravel was all that was left.
Relieved, I slouched my shoulders. Thank you, Mom.
Talking to her even though she couldn’t answer back, even though both of us were dead, made me feel a little less lonely. Especially here in the Core, a place I knew very little about.
I blinked down at my roots squirming on the ground, waiting for me to tell them what to do next. The red color kind of glowed around them, like fire around hot barbecue coals.
Bending closer, I pressed a hesitant finger to one. My skin hissed and smoke curled upward, but I didn’t feel a thing. My nerves were just as dead as I was. Were my roots hot because we were in the Core? Wasn’t it, like, a thousand degrees down here or something? My inability to feel was one tiny, and probably the only, bonus of being dead.
Now, my only option was to keep going straight toward a great big nothing, and then what? The bridge didn’t have any curves or turns or anything.
Another loud blast behind me shocked over the ground and made my squirming roots leap into the air. I stopped to look behind me, but when the telltale moaning didn’t start up, I squinted into the distance. I must’ve walked farther than I thought because I couldn’t even see the caves or the piles of rock I’d disintegrated the two stone trees into. Just the bridge, the eerie orange light, and nothing else.
I started walking again, all my magnified senses on high alert, while something prowled behind my back, watching, slipping closer.
Another petrified tree because I’d used magic? Somehow I didn’t think so, but I definitely wasn’t alone anymore.
Most of my focus had switched to behind me, so it took a few seconds to process what lay a few yards ahead. Something palm-sized and black, and my brain immediately became convinced it was a large spider. Thanks, brain. My past experiences with spiders would likely require a lot of therapy if I wasn’t already dead.
I crept up on it with slow steps while trying to make sense of its shape. It grew up from the ground in an upside-down cone. The part closest to the bottom curled outward in thin, delicate tips. I crouched over it, only glancing at it while I scanned my surroundings.
A dead lily. Not a spider, thank God, unless one hid underneath it. It might’ve belonged to Lily, a senior at school and also Tram’s sister. That sounded so weird, Lily and Tram as sister and brother. I never would’ve expected that, but if I had learned anything these last few weeks, it was to expect the unexpected.
Lily was down here, too, killed just after Tram right in front of my eyes by her own biological father. I shivered, not from cold but from the memory of that night. Nothing would ever make me forget the look on their faces, the terror in their eyes.
I shook myself to keep my focus and searched the bridge once again. With the luck I’d been having, this was probably a trap, and it would likely spring when I picked up the dead lily. Unless it wasn’t a trap. Maybe Lily had dropped it when the Counselor took her here. Maybe it was a sign that she and Tram were close.
Yet I still felt like someone or something was watching me. Slowly, I reached toward the lily and flipped it over. I leaped backward as dead flower parts scattered out, grew legs, and scuttled through my imagination. Stupid, stupid imagination. But it really was just a flower.
It rocked slightly with a papery sigh before I scooped it up in my palm. I’d had enough dead plants for fifty lifetimes, but seeing Lily’s dead lily not tucked behind her ear bothered me. We weren’t friends, never had been, but Mom risked her life to save Lily and Tram. Mom had struck a bargain with Gretchen before capturing her and vowed that she would switch two of Gretchen’s babies, Lily and Tram, with two other babies to fool the Counselor. It had worked until it didn’t, which was just a couple days ago.
So what if I brought the lily back to life? It would probably do me just as much good as it was now, but what if Lily left it for a reason? As a life-long, and beyond, member of the rule-breaking club, I had already performed magic in the Core by calling on my roots. This could help me. Somehow, I knew it could help me even though it would die again because of my death touch.
I settled it back on the ground, the hairs along my body lifted to attention. Good to know my sixth sense hadn’t died, but my insides squirmed like they might if I was trapped in an enclosed space with a killer. They, it, whomever stalked behind me might as well be breathing down my neck.
This might not work since I couldn’t speak aloud or touch the flower, but I had to try.
Break the ties that bind you to death, I said inside my head.
The flower unfurled and stretched thick pink petals toward the orange light as if it thought it was the sun. And standing behind it, when it hadn’t been a second ago, stood another stone tree, its branched fingertips inches away from my chin.
Oily black eyes stared into mine. A low moan heaved from its gaping jaw. It opened its hand to claw at my neck with its version of a death touch that would reduce me to a pile of pebbles.
My stomach tightened on a scream I didn’t have the air for. I tripped backward over my own bootlaces and smashed to the ground.
A stone foot made from thick roots quickly followed my descent until it was all I could see. Filling my vision. Crashing toward my head at top speed.
Oh, my God, move. I rolled out of the way just as its foot shattered against the ground.
Get it, I ESP’d my roots.
They swept toward the tree, but without its roots to stand on, it toppled while my roots yanked it down even faster. Toward me right behind it.
Shit.
Other way!
But it was too late. The tree was falling once again, too fast for me to move, a stone death sentence with a single touch or squish.
Slice, I said, and somehow my roots knew what I meant.
They ripped through its body, destroying it, before it tipped over completely and pounded me into the ground. Chunks of petrified tree hailed down and gashed at my skin. If I could’ve held my breath, I would have. Would I still turn to stone under all this debris?
I waited, unmoving, and listened to the clatter of rocks and dust bury me alive for the third time in my life. Seconds passed. I wriggled my fingers, my toes. Hurray for the dead punk rock girl who didn’t morph into an actual rock.
Stone rattled and knocked together as I tried to unload the weight on top of me and get to my feet. When a pair of wings fluttered by, I snapped my eyes open and blinked debris out of them.
A black bird flew over my head. A bird whose neck rolled at an odd angle.
I knew that messed up bird because it had tried to kill me by dragging me into traffic and had dove down Lily’s throat. It belonged to Aneska, the Counselor’s third child who lived down here with him. She was just as loony bin crazy as her dad, and she was also the one who had helped him find Tram and Lily. And where Aneska wen
t, the bird was sure to follow.
The lily, pink and alive and still upside-down, lay inches from my fingertips. I scooped it up to give it to its rightful owner, and I fully expected it to wither in my palm. When it didn’t, a sliver of hope ignited in my motionless heart. I didn’t know how or why it didn’t die, but this had to mean something.
Pieces of petrified tree rolled to the floor and coated me with a fine layer of grit. Free camouflage for a little dead bird hunting.
And that hunt had to end by saving Tram and Lily.
Leigh
Surprisingly, I turned out to be an okay bird hunter, though I would never tell Jo that.
At the thought of her, I quickened my pace along the stone bridge. I wished I knew what was happening with her, if she was still safely tucked away inside her house surrounded by hawthorn twigs and lilac petals to keep everything horrible away from her and Cal, if she knew yet that I had failed and that the Core had opened. Would she ever forgive me for the part I played to destroy the planet she’d fought so hard to save? I hoped so, and I hoped I would have the chance to explain it to her someday.
My red roots slithered after me while I kept the bird in sight, and that something else—that feeling that I wasn’t alone—stalked after them. We were a line of prey and predator, and it was too hard to tell which was which.
This bridge had to go somewhere, had to turn or branch off, but it never did. The broken bird flew down the bridge’s center, its wings beating a steady rhythm that threw no shadows, which was almost as frustratingly weird as going nowhere. I was wasting enormous amounts of time.
I curled my fingers into fists, but I didn’t want to crush the lily still cupped inside them. When my thumb slid against the live petals, my body jolted as if I’d smashed into a wall. The lily fell, but when I bent to pick it up, the bridge had vanished. A white marble floor had taken its place, and my boots squeaked on its surface as I stood. Well, this was different, this was progress, this was…a house?
Behind me, arched double doors engraved with leafy, thorny vines towered over an entryway with an ornate chandelier hanging from its center. The entryway opened on the right and left into large rooms and ended in a mammoth framed painting of a pale man with wavy, blond hair. Except for the missing thorns leaking chemicals from his face, I recognized him instantly.
The Counselor.
This was his house, and since I wasn’t exactly invited in, I doubted he would make me a cup of tea and offer a tour of his lavish home if he knew I was here. Which was fine since I preferred self-guided tours anyway.
I ducked my head into the room on the left first, a sitting room with white everything, but the lily spun in my palm and pointed its inch-long stem in the opposite direction like a flower compass. Lily’s idea? Genius, if it was.
The room on the right looked the exact same as the other one. Except the end of a black cloak sweeping around a corner into the next room.
I froze and called to my roots so they could help me feel things out. A slight vibration rolled under my toes, then a series of soft knocks, as if they struggled to get through the marble flooring.
One had said no magic, and inside the Counselor’s home, he really meant it. I would just have to rely on my quick wit and charm. Or my fists. Definitely my fists.
Around the same corner the black cloak had gone, I stepped into an even larger room, one that reminded me more of the stone bridge. Long cracks forked up the rock walls and across the ceiling with some fissures big enough for me to crawl inside. If the Core ever caved in, miles and miles of the earth would crush us all. Even dead, the idea of being buried alive again bothered me, despite the whole not having to breathe thing.
The strange orange light that had been around the bridge seemed dimmer in here. It spotlighted an indented circle in the middle of the room. From the pitted center, three narrow channels had been tunneled into the stone to stretch in different directions across the cracked floor. Then, they angled up the walls to an impossibly high ceiling hidden, even to me, in shadow.
Three of them. Something told me that wasn’t a coincidence.
A bird’s wings fluttered far above. Was Aneska in here, too, with her brother and sister? Had that been her I’d seen rounding the corner?
Tram, I called, hoping with everything I had he could hear me. But Aneska might be able to hear me, too.
Stealth. Now there was a thought, one I should have had before I waltzed in here doing the equivalent of crashing two cymbals together, but stealth would be hard to do if Aneska was tuned in to the same radio frequency of all my thoughts.
I waited, muscles tensed, for any sound other than a bird’s rustling, but all was quiet.
On silent feet, I crept forward. The indentation in the middle of the room seemed to glow an odd reddish color. A smooth black stone brim with strange markings engraved all over it curved over its edge. The three channels that webbed from it were made from the same material. It gleamed in the light, almost as if it was wet.
Feathers swished together over my head again, and I wondered if that dead zombie bird even knew I was in here with it. Or if it knew and didn’t care. Or if it was communicating everything I was doing to Aneska.
Whatever. Let them see. Stealth worked if time wasn’t an issue, but it really, really was.
I swiped a fingertip inside one of the channels, and it came up slicked with red. Blood, no doubt, and even more inside the pit in the center. A whole pool of it.
This had to be where the Counselor was draining his own children of their blood for his twisted quest for immortality. He wanted the Core to open to relieve him of his Counselor’s duties—so he could explore a career in acupuncture?—but couldn’t open it himself because, lucky for everyone, there weren’t three of him. But most importantly, he wanted the Core to open so he could walk the earth, not as his ugly, chemically injected self, but as an immortal, and pick off everyone he didn’t see as worthy. So, basically everyone.
His kids’ blood must be running down the channels and into the pool in the center from somewhere up above. The whole repulsive set-up gave the room a sort of inverted gift box look, complete with bow and ribbons up three walls, minus one ribbon. Except this was likely a gift no one among the sane would want to receive.
Tram and Lily must be up high then, concealed in darkness, maybe even inside one of the giant gaps in the wall. I followed the nearest channel to the wall and found a few hand and footholds I could use for climbing, and oh, how I loved climbing.
Death hadn’t changed me enough to forget my fears, and I had about fifty thousand of them. Heights. I wished they would jump off a cliff. How was that for irony?
Without the use of magic to help, I didn’t have much of a choice. I tightened my grip and pulled myself up a few inches. At this rate, I could maybe scale the wall in a year. I forced myself to move faster, trusting the few instincts I had, and reminding myself I was already dead. If I fell, I would get up and try again.
Lily? Can you hear me?
Silence, except the air shifted above me. Not a bird’s wings but something else, something…like hair against papery skin.
Whose blood channel was I climbing up next to? I gripped the handholds tighter and stared up into the shadows. There was a sixty-six percent chance this blood channel wasn’t Aneska’s, but if it was, I hoped I wasn’t climbing up into a trap.
Higher, faster, I climbed. With the orangish-red light fading underneath me, it became harder to see where to put my hands and feet, even with my newly maximized eyesight. This darkness wasn’t normal; it had to be some kind of magic. So, someone could use magic in here, but not me.
Another few feet up and another until my head banged against something. A creaking sounded, and I had the sensation that something was swaying above me.
Jackpot. Maybe.
To see what it was, I would have to release my grip from the wall and reach behind and up over my head at an awkward angle, and I was already clinging to the wall in a jumbled me
ss of limbs.
I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts, to store them in the cool, I-got-this part of my brain. And that was the absolute worst thing I could do. A second before I opened them again, wings snapped at my bare legs and flew up into my face.
I hissed, but it didn’t appear to do any good. The bird’s beak stabbed into my cheeks, my lips, my eyelids. I shoved away from the wall and jerked my feet at the feathered undead, but my wild kicks connected with stone, missing the flying bird altogether.
It wouldn’t make me fall. I refused to be defeated by a floppy-necked dead bird.
My feet placed once again in their crevices, I released one of my handholds and awkwardly wrenched my arm over my shoulder. My fist smashed into what felt like a stone bar, and I snatched at it. A bar of a cage, maybe?
My grip on the bar had shifted all my weight, and I couldn’t be sure I could find that same handhold again in this magical dark without flinging myself at the wall and grabbing at nothing. I had chosen the cage to clutch onto, and now I had to go with it…or else. Hopefully it really was a cage and not just a bar floating over my head for no reason.
Wings pulsed at the air and stroked my cheek while blowing hair around my eyes. Just before diving into my mouth. My open mouth that could not close.
Claws scratched at my tongue. Its beak pecked into the side of my mouth, and the sickening feel of blood and moldy feathers and decayed fowl triggered a massive shudder through my insides.
Panic flared through me at whatever its motive. To possess me? To stop me from fighting back? Didn’t matter. That dead bird was toast.
With more trust in the stone bar than anything else in my entire life, I freed myself from the wall and let the bar support my full weight. Too many feet up in the air, I dangled by one hand. With my other one, I seized the bird’s tail before its head touched the back of my throat and yanked.
The Trinity Bleeds (The Grave Winner Book 3) Page 4
