by Norah Wilson
It was all Brooke could do not to curl up into herself, and Bryce held a hand to his head, but somehow Alex was already off and running toward the shed.
“Stop!” Bryce yelled after her. “Let the demon burn!”
When Alex stumbled on, he lifted the shotgun. From the angle he held it, he was probably going to fire a warning shot over her head, but Brooke didn’t give him a chance. She grabbed the barrel, swiveled her hips to get out of the way and gave it sharp yank, using the power of her core, just as Adonai had shown her. The move pulled Bryce off balance. She brought her other hand up and slammed it into the stock, wrenching the shotgun away from a surprised Bryce, who fell to his knees. It was rage that guided her next action, not the informal Krav Maga lessons Adonai had given her. She lifted the gun two-handed and brought the wooden stock down on his head. He slumped immediately to the snow.
Sobbing, she threw the gun as far as she could. It landed almost silently, sinking out of sight in the snow.
Maryanne was still screaming that mind-bending, primal scream, and the horses were going crazy with it, plunging and kicking the walls of their stalls. Their panic-stricken cries rang out.
Oh God, that scream! It was shredding her mind! Her soul! Breaking her heart with the grief. But Brooke pushed through it and ran after Alex.
Chapter 36
Alex
Kindled
Alex raced toward the shed like a bat out of hell. Or like a bat heading straight into it. Her heart hammered like a possessed piston in her chest, and she knew she was moving on pure adrenaline. Arms pumping and legs scissoring, she plowed through the heavy snow as if it were powder.
Through the window she saw the flames climbing the walls inside the shed. Fire glowed orange around the door frame.
“The roof!” Brooke shouted. “Alex, look at the roof!”
Oh no! Her adrenaline kicked up another notch as she saw the tiny flames licking out along the roof’s edge. The whole roof would be on fire soon, collapsing in, and then—
“Maryanne, hold on!” Brooke screamed, her voice sounding much closer this time.
Alex glanced back over her shoulder. Brooke had closed the distance, but what caught her eye was Bryce lurching to his feet. Wiping blood from his eyes, he stumbled toward them, cursing. The shotgun was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t stop the fresh surge of fear.
“Let the Heller burn!” he raged. “Let it—”
Then another voice cried out, and Alex stopped dead in her tracks. They all did. The coldness that blasted right into Alex’s bones had nothing to do with the snowstorm now. She felt as if she were turning, though she stood perfectly still. She felt as if the clouds were swirling all around her head, but they of course held to the sky. The wind was whirling the snow fiercely in a clockwise direction all around her, she realized. Then Alex’s whole world spun when she heard the words: Me-anne! Me-anne! Me-annnnnnnne!
Oh, no! Jason!
That babyish voice—that baby’s spirit—called out to his sister, screaming her name as she burned! And Alex could freakin’ hear him!
Jason’s voice grew louder, more frantic, but then his cries were drowned out by Maryanne. This time, the primal scream that ripped out of her was deep and desperate. Bone-shaking.
Alex could no longer stand it; she fell to her knees in the snow.
The soul-rising shrieks of pain just kept coming. The sound reached right down inside Alex and broke her heart; gnawed at her very sanity. Oh God, this was what the others felt when the casters shrieked. That caster scream travelled through her body. Not just the sound, but the very feel of it. Her heart seemed to clench with agony. Her eyes pained as they literally bulged. Legend said that Ira Walker’s hair had turned white when he’d heard that scream. Alex believed it now. Her instinct was to cover her ears with her hands, but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t do that to Maryanne. No! She’d feel her pain.
Then Brooke was there beside her, on her knees too. One look at the other girl’s tear-streaked, grief-torn face and Alex knew that scream was affecting her just the same. Just as horribly.
“Our sister,” Brooke choked. “Jason’s…sister. She’s burning. Her scream…the pain in her scream…”
“We have to save her.”
Alex struggled to her feet and helped Brooke up. Together they stumbled toward the burning shed, the burning Maryanne.
Chapter 37
Maryanne
Damnation
The iron collar seared into her neck, choking her all the more, and she struggled against it. It had burned from the moment Bryce had closed it around her throat, but with every second, it seemed to burn more.
The fire, the extreme heat forced the iron to a more painful strength, she realized. While Maryanne couldn’t feel the heat from the fire any more than she’d felt the snow outside, the collar around her neck could feel it. The molecules in the iron must be dancing faster and faster, spreading out, expanding. Maryanne’s agony would only grow as the metal grew hotter. Could she die from it? Could her cast die beneath the killing weight of molten iron if she didn’t get out of there?
The thought sent her terror off the freakin’ charts. And yet through it all, through her panic and all-consuming anguish, Maryanne heard Brooke screaming, “Hold on! We’re coming!” And she couldn’t help but feel a wave of panic-ridged hope.
But would Bryce hurt Alex and Brooke too, if he caught them? How far into madness had the hunter gone? How far had they all gone?
Me-anne! Me-anne! Me-annnnne—no!
The shed shook as Jason screeched her name, louder than ever before, on this night of her demise.
Oh no!
The flames were getting closer, and the burning bite of the hot metal was purely savage. More intense than any physical pain she’d ever felt in her entire life. Maryanne couldn’t help it. The wail that erupted was primal, visceral, emanating from the deepest parts of her being. The hot iron that imprisoned her burned her like hellfire itself!
Back in the attic at Harvell House, her original trembled and gasped for air as if it was surrounded by flames too. In the shed as flames grew and leapt all around her, Maryanne’s caster self more than trembled, more than gasped. On the floor, she writhed in the agony of the iron’s fire. Her fire. Her damnation and death. No, her life had been her damnation after what she’d done to Jason.
Would she burn after all? Would she ignite into flame? And then what would become of her cast? Her body? Would the nothingness be consumed, or would the fire inhabit it? And once it claimed her emptiness, would she just burn forever and ever?
Oh, God, she had to calm herself. Despite the agony, despite the panic, she had to calm down. Brooke and Alex were coming for her. Her primal scream would cut them down, hurt them. She had to control herself.
There was a loud crack beside her as the shelf fell. Ira Walker’s carvings tumbled down to the floor. The parrot and pirate fell together and the flames started licking at them both. The painted black caster doll rolled further, rocking to a stop at Maryanne’s shoulder. The flames were surging now, further up all four walls, and crawling closer to her. Movement outside caught her attention, and she looked to the window. Alex and Brooke were staggering toward the shed. The scream—her scream had hurt them—yet it was nearly beyond her in its own need to exist. To erupt. Would they get to her in time? How could they? They couldn’t enter this inferno. Couldn’t get anywhere close to it!
More wood crackled. One of the strong cupboard doors fell to the floor and then the other followed, its singed wood passing through Maryanne’s leg as it banged to the floor. She looked into the cupboard—the one that had been her death trap, raining down iron upon her. She saw it then, one of Ira’s Journals. Bryce’s now. No sooner did she recognize it when it started to curl and burn. Oh, God, it was burning right before her! All that knowledge. All those lines of hatred, all those words of fear and loathing and plans to destroy those who just longed to survive and soar the only way they could in this damnable life
.
All of the journals burned now. Book after book, page after page, consumed before her black caster eyes.
“Maryanne!” Alex’s voice, shrill with panic. “Hold on! We’ll…we’ll save you!”
They couldn’t. No one could save her.
The knowledge was hers instantly and absolutely. And yet, even as the pain soared, Maryanne knew it had been with her for what seemed like an eternity. No one could save her. She was doomed to suffer forever—
Say it!
“For killing my baby brother.”
Me-anne! Me-anne! Me-anne!!
She looked up and around the burning room, felt the red-hot collar on her neck absorbing more of the fire’s heat. Knew the fire might never end. Yet it wasn’t the pain that filled her now. Instead, grief ripped through her heart like a jagged and raging blade, tearing straight through her and burning her soul like no fire ever could.
“My hell,” she said. “This is my damnation. For what I did to—”
Jason.
He called her name again. Again and again! To haunt her even in these last painful minutes.
Oh dear God, the pain she felt—the agony she deserved!
And the primal scream that erupted wasn’t one just of pain, but of that long-held grief. Endless sorrow and rivers of grief for what she’d done to Jason. It rose and roared from depths she didn’t even know she’d held, that didn’t seem even possible.
Maryanne knew this was her fitting end—this was her living hell. She didn’t even struggle now. She just waited for the flames to consume her. All she could do was scream again, in her crying agony.
Chapter 38
Telling Torment
Alex
Alex fell on her knees again just outside the shed door as Maryanne’s primordial wail shook out through the air again. It was like a blast to her chest, pounding right into her, pounding her backward. But it was different this time—that pain. Brooke clenched Alex’s arm with both fists as she too went down beside her, but whether in support or for support, Alex couldn’t tell. Bryce had fallen too with that last primal scream, but he was getting up again, moving toward them, toward the burning shed.
“Did you feel that?” Brooke asked. “The…torment in that scream?”
“Yeah.”
They had to hurry! But to do what? How could they save Maryanne? The building was still sealed tightly. Fire glowed around the heavy door, and Maryanne was trapped in there.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Alex yelled.
Brooke’s jaw tightened. “I know what to do.” She was on her feet and running, plowing through the snow as if it were nothing.
Alex knew instantly what Brooke intended to do, but she wasn’t fast enough to stop her. “No!” she cried after Brooke. “Don’t kick the—” Her shout was drowned out by a horrible, hungry whoosh as the fire sucked fresh oxygen through the door Brooke had just kicked wide open.
Brooke dove back, shaking her head as if to clear it. Her eyes were wide, her mouth hanging open, her face shining with sweat even as she lay there in the snow. “I…I never thought.”
“I know,” Alex said, tears streaming down her own face as the flames leapt higher, hotter.
Then Brook was back on her feet again. She shielded her face with her arms as she took a step forward, toward the inferno of the shed. Alex lunged and pulled her back.
“It’s too hot! You’ll be burned alive!”
Brooke choked back the sobs. They both did.
The flames were all but consuming the building now, creating a wall of fire around Maryanne. The heat of it as Alex stood back was nearly too much to bear. But she could see inside. See Maryanne—see her reddish-black cast writhing in agony on the floor in the middle of the shed. And oh dear God in heaven, she was chained there to the thick leg of the workbench! Collared and chained! With the very collar Brooke had seen Bryce create. Fire lapped around Maryanne now. That Walker vengeance, closing in. Burning.
“Look at her,” Brooke sobbed. “Look at…her face.”
And as Maryanne unleashed another primal scream—one filled with such torment it was like a red hot poker in Alex’s brain—Alex could clearly see her face. Not the black and empty caster face, but Maryanne’s face etched into the cast in lines of gray. She knew those gray lines; had seen them before on the night Connie had rescued them here at the Walker farm. Just as before, those lines were telling—not just of the physical pain, but the emotional nightmare that the caster was living. And the nightmare Maryanne was living was killing her inside.
This was way past grief—this was profound tragedy—lined so deeply into Maryanne’s face she looked ancient with it. This was her soul’s pain, the ghastly memories that tortured her beyond belief. The fire was nothing compared to the pain of her guilt and grief over Jason’s death. That was why her scream had changed. That was the pain this caster showed when she gave her primal scream, like she was being savagely torn apart from within. And she was! That was the nightmare poor Maryanne lived with every day of her life. No wonder she carried a death wish.
That’s when it hit Alex—this wasn’t just the pain she lived with every day of her life. It was the pain she wanted to die with. Oh God, within the fire. The hellfire! Her hell!
Bryce came up beside them and Alex struck him. Hard, right across the face with her closed fist. She was about to do it again when she saw the tears streaking his cheeks. Brooke must have seen them too; she had poised to level him, but didn’t.
Bryce was looking beyond the wall of flames, to Maryanne. The hunter saw the victory but took no pleasure in this kill. “Maryanne! What have I done? Oh, God help me, what have I done to you? Maryanne!” He dropped to his knees, crying so hard now the tears streaked the blood and soot on his face.
“Me-annne! Me-anne! Me-anne!”
Jason’s screeching voice filled the air. Those cries were frantic, and they combined with Maryanne’s desperate cries to make it almost unbearable. Sparks flew as the shed shook. Even with the heavy snow, on this windless day, the tall pines swept the skies. Jason’s cries were not going to be unheard this night his sister was burning. He was making damn sure of it. He was making—
“Damn sure of it.” A chill rose through Alex as she spoke the thought out loud.
Omigod! Jason wanted her—Alex—to hear him. He wasn’t calling to Maryanne this time—he was calling to her! She knew it! She finally understood it! Jason wasn’t haunting Maryanne, trying to destroy her. His spirit was reaching out to help her. “Oh God, to save her!” Alex’s eyes burned as she moved closer to the door, as close as she could. Heat rose around her. And she felt Jason around her, above her.
“The roof!” Brooke cried.
Alex didn’t need to glance up. It too was burning now, and would collapse any moment. She had to get Maryanne out of there.
No, Maryanne had to get out herself out of there.
“Maryanne, your brother’s here! Jason wants—”
Another primal wailing, filled with guilt and grief and anguish, escaped from Maryanne. Alex managed to stay on her feet. Fortified herself against the cry, and against the heart-breaking look carved into Maryanne’s cast.
“Jason’s here and he…he wants you to know it’s okay. He’s not here to haunt you. He’s not here to condemn you.”
Maryanne wailed again, but Alex didn’t take a step back. Didn’t fall down, and Brooke stood there with her now at the doorway to hell.
“He’s here because he loves you, dammit!” Brooke cried out. “He wants you to live. To survive!”
Alex drew a breath; Brooke understood. Realized what was happening. “Don’t you see, Maryanne,” Alex called through the flames. “Oh, God, you have to see! It’s your hell—you have to pull yourself out of it. You didn’t mean for Jason to die; you didn’t mean for that to happen! You may have had a bad feeling but you didn’t know your brother was choking—”
The scream cut her off—cut her down. Oh God, the agony of that grief!
/> It was Brooke now who yelled over the flames. “Jason doesn’t want you to suffer. He loved you—he loves you! That’s why he’s been calling to you—coming to you. Not to haunt you, but to help you. He’s begging you to be strong. Strong enough to pull yourself out of there. Strong enough to live through this—all of this!”
“I lived through my rape!” Alex screamed at her now. “I survived my hell! And now you have to survive yours. That’s the way it works, Hemlock! Pull yourself out of there. Survive! Sometimes survival’s all we have to start with. All we have to build on. We find our strength in such strange places. Like way down deep inside, in our darkest nights…or down in our deepest hell. Maryanne, come back to us.”
Silence.
The silence was so profound and complete in Alex’s mind, it deadened the crackling and roar of the fire. The trees stood still. The snow had even stopped falling. Nothing moved around them. Then the ground began to shake. Inside the shed it began to shake, and the crack of the workbench leg snapping was like a gunshot in Alex’s hearing. The workbench was going to fall! Right on Maryanne. Spikes, iron spikes glowed red on it. They’d land on her and intensify her agony.
Alex watched in horror—God, it was as if in slow motion!—as the workbench tipped, then started to topple over. But in the last seconds before it crashed down, incredibly—impossibly!—Maryanne rolled out of the way.
Chapter 39
Snap
Maryanne
She’d moved! She’d actually rolled out of the way of the falling workbench. Missed the shower of spikes. But how had she moved at all? Iron was totally sapping, completely paralyzing. And hot iron was infinitely worse.
The chain had snapped too, though she wasn’t sure whether that was from her own efforts or by Jason’s force. She was still stuck with that hellish collar, but her leash was broken.
How had she done it?
She looked down at her hands and saw that she still gripped the copper tools she was going to use to extract and carry the journal. She still had one of the copper bracelets Connie Harvell had given her around her right wrist. She must have drawn strength from the copper. Enough to have rolled, anyway. Maybe Jason had done the rest.
