I gave the Fae a thin smile. “Then get the hell out of here already.” I lowered my weapon.
Flowers glanced from me to his sword, as if sizing up his chances one last time before nodding gravely. “Very well.” He began to liquefy, the parts of his body in contact with the ground becoming amorphous and seeping into it, like floodwaters slowly absorbing into the earth. He was using the very earth and stone to step Next Door.
I watched him dissolve. “If you’re lucky, by tomorrow there won’t be an ‘other vampire’ to hold the rest of your debt.”
Flowers eyed me as he melted creepily into the ground up to his barrel chest. “You have been a worthy foe for your size. But the blood vampire will kill you if you enter his realm.” He shook his craggy head as it began to absorb into the ground. “Shame, for it has been far too long since your kind has walked the earth.”
I shrugged. “Thanks for the advice.” I kicked the troll’s sword over to him, and a stony hand drug it after him into the earth. “But I don’t die easy. Well, except for that one time.” I settled the bone in my arm back into place once again. I still had work to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The ghost next door
Now that I’d dealt with the vanguard, the rest of the trek up the hill was uneventful. The only thing to keep me company for the trip was the increasingly faint howls of a dangling troll, as they slowly dwindled into plaintive cries. The fight with the pair of them hadn’t been easy or quick, but it had been necessary. The scrapyard had to be clear for the next stages of the plan.
I walked past the now-abandoned house of horrors and approached the blood pool, checking once more to make sure I still had everything I needed. The unassuming sack Rain and Jason had brought me hung on one hip and a round, green silk satchel on the other.
“Here goes nothing,” I rasped. I sent off one last text to my waiting friends and stepped Next Door.
- - -
Monument Valley welcomed me with open arms, even if it seemed darker and more pregnant with menace than it ever had before. The air here was colder than ever as well, chill enough for my skin to feel it. A shallow layer of thick fog smothered the dense earth and tufts of gray grass, a blanket of bloody red vapor that stirred sluggishly of its own accord.
Like the ever-enduring monuments all around, everything else was the same as it had always been—save for the crimson veins marring one side of the midnight sky, pulsing slowly in a disturbingly irregular rhythm.
I had known I’d end up here before I could make my way into Salvatore’s personal realm and not just because its shadow overlaid Home as one neared the blood pool or because it made far too much sense for Salvatore to use the little specter as an additional layer of cannon fodder.
I knew because Maggie and I had too much in common. She’d watched me for weeks, been in my dreams, and shared the same unearthly resonance as I. We’d fought, we’d frequented the same haunts. I’d killed her master, her maker, and his blood still flowed richly through my veins, another tie binding us to a collision course. And, more than all of that, there was the singular thread that had caused her and her demented caretaker to seek me out in the first place, the thing that had drawn me close to Monument Valley since before Maggie and I had even crossed paths.
We were both killers.
“Maggie?” I called, my voice rough and harsh despite every attempt to force it to sound soft and kind. I scanned the dark for her but saw nothing, despite my crazy vampire eyes making short work of the shadows lurking all around. “Maggie? Where are you? I know you’re here.”
The area between my shoulder blades lit up, prickling with the sudden pressure of watching eyes. No longer was that feeling merely eerie and laced with curiosity; now it dripped with malice and fermenting anger.
“Don’t you know, vampire? Can’t you find me?” Her little voice echoed with childish cruelty, coming from everywhere around me, bouncing off the towering monuments and stirring the seething fog. “Why don’t you just tear out my throat, like you did with Father.”
I caught sight of gleaming eyes and chiseled teeth of her visage, open and hungry, right at my elbow. I swiped at her, trying to grab her, but she disappeared into the fog. “This doesn't have to be the way it is.” I scanned the Valley, trying to spot where the elusive specter had gone. “We don’t have to fight. No one’s making you do this.”
“He said you’d come, you know. My new Father.” Her voice hissed through the air and into my head, providing no clues to her location. I thought I caught a glimpse of dirty white cloth, of blades and fluttering rags. But by the time I whirled around, she was gone.
I struggled to stifle a growl. “He’s not your father! Neither of them was! They never were! Deep inside, you have to know that.” I felt her malicious presence behind me again, but she vanished as quickly as she’d appeared. “You had a real family once, Maggie, a family that loved you! That still loves you!”
“Loved me? Loved me?” Her voice rose, harsh and sharp like razors, close enough to touch. “They loved me so much they forgot me. They replaced me! Made a new home. Made a new little girl.”
“That’s not how it happened.” I shook my head, calling out to the darkness. Trying to get through to her. “In their new house, they still have a room for you. Your toys. To remember you by.” There was a hiss of animosity, and a flash of blades flickered by my face. “They never forgot you. I think that’s why you always followed them, why you always came back! They never stopped loving you, and they still haven’t forgotten you.”
Silence reigned long enough to make me think that I might have gotten through to her. That we might not have to do this the hard way.
Then she fell on me from out of nowhere, a tiny bundle of ragged rage falling out of the starry darkness. “Liar!” Maggie Keys landed on my back, tearing and rending, spitting the word like venom.
Monument Valley was where Maggie was strongest, and I stumbled under the sheer force of her assault. The clothes shielding my back evaporated under her frantic blades, and she went to work on the flesh beneath. I knew immediately that even my tough Strigoi skin wouldn’t hold up for long.
Sorry, kid. The gloves have to come off.
I threw myself backward, slamming Maggie into one of the obelisks, knocking her loose. Like me, she wasn’t alive, and the blow couldn’t stun her. But I managed to catch her head on the rebound, and slammed her little porcelain face into the obsidian obelisk, grinding her against it.
I could have destroyed her right then and there—if I’d acted. But she looked up at me from where I pinned her to the stone, her porcelain face starting to crack, one mad eye glistening with fear mixed into the rabid rage. I didn’t really want to hurt Maggie Keys.
I hesitated, and she slipped free.
She snarled savagely, any traces of sympathetic emotion gone without a trace. Had she gotten in my head? No time to worry about that now. Maggie darted at me again, almost too fast to keep track of, bristling with blades that lanced out, reaching for my heart, eyes, and throat.
“Ow ow ow,” I let out a constant stream of complaint as I backed away, proceeding to endure a lengthy, brutal stabbing that no mortal could have survived. I covered up as best I could, blocking blades with my arms, but Maggie was relentless, remorseless, and as tireless as I was. As she tore apart the sleeves of my coat and carved line after bloody line in my flesh, I saw that a defensive fight with Maggie was simply a fight I couldn’t win.
I had to gamble.
I waited for her to stab her chitinous spider-leg-blades at my ribs, and let my guard slip downward, exposing my right eye. Predictably, another blade-tipped appendage thrust at my face, almost faster than I could react to it. I flinched at the last possible moment, and the blade scraped across the bridge of my nose instead, but my gambit worked—one hand closed around the long chitin limb that sought my eye, and I had her in my grasp.
Yanking Maggie close, I opened a pouch at my waist and threw a handful of magnetized ir
on shavings into her face. She wailed like the legendary bainshee as the iron passed through her form and disrupted it, her doll-like face rippling like cloudy water in the metal’s wake. The sound of her cry pierced my skull so dreadfully I feared it might split the bone. I didn’t let up this time, though, slinging her against the nearest monument and pinning her there with one knee against her tiny chest.
The chitin appendage in my grip broke in half as I twisted, and she snarled anew, the iron’s effects already beginning to wear off. I went after another bladed limb, then another, pruning the angry ghost as quickly as I could manage—each one broken forcing a fresh rasp of emotion from her. The fewer of these things she had, the better off I’d be in the long run.
I’d broken about half of them before I realized she wasn’t rasping in pain, or even anger.
Maggie was laughing.
I didn’t have a chance to process what might be going wrong before she tensed, and a dozen fresh, blade-tipped appendages burst fully formed from her back. They shot forward, but they didn’t dive into my unprepared, undefended flesh—they wrapped around me, pulling me close to the tiny specter in a monstrous embrace.
“Shouldn’t have come here,” Maggie’s ghost hissed into my face with satisfaction. “New Father told me how to kill you.”
She hadn’t grabbed me with every blade—she’d left one in reserve, a straight-edged, gleaming silver blade, sharp and long and tapering to a point, like an ice pick or a stiletto.
She rammed it between my ribs.
I tried to grab it in time, but that unearthly, razor sharp appendage sliced into my skin, slipping between my ribs on the left side. I felt it as it slid inward and angled upward, bit by bit, fighting tough Strigoi flesh the whole way. I felt it as it bit into my heart, the dead organ giving off a single, powerful shock of agony as the blade muscled its way inside, just a little bit.
It spasmed once, pushing pain potently along my veins before it stopped beating entirely.
My muscles immediately locked up, going stiff and immobile as surely as if I were turning to stone. My speed slipped away, along with any precision, as it became excruciatingly difficult to move, far worse than the first night I’d reanimated. Only momentum and sheer willpower or maybe just stubbornness, kept my hand moving.
Dead fingers closed around the little ghost’s impaling spike, clamping down like a vice. The blade abruptly stopped moving, but was still embedded what felt like six feet deep into my heart.
Maggie pushed and strained, but my fingers were locked up, my muscles rigid and immobile. That blade was going nowhere.
Locked in a deadly stalemate with a vicious, underaged specter, I pushed aside my fear and concentrated. Slowly, agonizingly slow, my other hand moved. I pushed at the dead weight of my own arm, reaching for my waist. It would have been quicker to climb Everest, but I slowly moved aside my tattered hoodie, reaching underneath with the sheer force of will I put behind simply not failing.
Cherubic, snarling, and triumphant, Maggie noticed what I was doing just as my fingers tangled themselves in the strings of the green silk pouch.
Hershel’s favor.
Her blade-fingered hands dove for my wrist.
I spasmed, almost losing my feeble grip, and tugged the pouch open.
Brilliant emerald light scoured Monument Valley as the magic of the Dawn Fae, carefully tended and cultivated by Birmingham's own Warden of the Green, spilled forth. Vibrant green vines, garish and unwelcome in the quiet deathly air of Monument Valley, burst out of the pouch, tearing the smooth green silk to shreds. In a single instant of unrestrained, rampant growth, those vines wrapped around us both, a constricting cocoon of creepers—each thicker than my arm.
The Fae magic yanked us both together, crushing Maggie and myself against each other so tightly that we couldn’t move a muscle. She snarled, pressed against my chest, and tried to bite me, but the plants didn’t even allow enough range of motion for that. I imagined that, were I yet mortal, these hungry, vital vines would be crushing the life and breath from me.
A Strigoi, however—not so much.
“What are you doing?” Maggie snarled, wiggling and struggling frantically. But the more she fought, the tighter the vines grew around us, just like Hershel had warned me. “Just give up and die.” She tugged, pushed, and yanked at the blade stuck in my heart, but it was still frozen in place by dead fingers and massive, living ivy.
“Why does everyone say that?” I mumbled quietly as a vine wriggled blindly across my face.
“I’ll get free eventually,” she snarled. Two fresh appendages burst from her ragged back as she drew on the ambient energy of Monument Valley. One of them was tipped with a pair of rusty shears; both began to saw slowly at the entrapping greenery. “You’re stuck here with me. You can’t escape, you can't go anywhere.”
That wasn’t precisely true. Maggie might be right, in the physical sense.
But you didn’t have to move physically to go Home.
The rough canvas bag yanked at my hip with surprising force, as if it were trying to pull itself free. I was suddenly glad for the vines, as well as for the loop of iron logging chain that bound it to my hips.
“Sorry,” I rasped. “That’s our cue to leave.”
As the bag tugged at me again, I let go of Next Door and stepped sideways, following the insistent pull of the wizard on the other side.
I slammed down on carpeted flooring in the middle of a suburban home, Maggie’s specter still stuck to me.
“Ashley!” I could hear Tamara’s concerned voice, but I couldn’t see her; vines had managed to cover my eyes. “I didn’t think you were going to tie yourself up too.”
“She’s hurt,” Charles announced. I wondered how he could tell through my vine cocoon. Maybe he just expected it. “That thing’s got her in the heart.”
“What do we do?” Tamara’s voice edged a little further toward alarm. “What will that do to her?”
“Nothing, if y’all will just calm down,” Mama Flora said. “Now shush.”
“And move out of the way.” Hershel’s voice was as big as he was; he liked to show off. “My turn first.”
He crooned to the vines, and they listened—mostly. They unwrapped me, while binding Maggie even tighter. Tamara rushed to my side and tried to extract the blade from my chest, to no avail. Finally, Charles simply broke Maggie’s limb off with a sharp blow from his staff, and Tamara planted a foot on my stomach, her eyes glowing a deep, liquid blue as she used all of her strength to pry the blade free of my own dead hand.
As it started to slide out, the tension released, bit by bit. I steadily regained the ability to move and picked up momentum, helping Tamara remove the ghastly shiv.
The blade came free. Across the Keys’ living room, the ghost that had once been their child snarled.
I sighed with relief and sat up. “That...was not pleasant.” I accepted Tamara’s hand, and she pulled me to my feet, then into a hug. “One of ten, would not impale again.”
“You’re okay,” Charles said. I didn’t think it was a question, but I wasn’t for certain.
“Um,” Hershel was dressed for war in a grease-stained Zelda T-shirt, ragged blue jeans, and leafy green pauldrons that dripped living, metallic armor down the outsides of both his thick arms and legs. The hilt of a tall zweihander stuck over his shoulder, complete with a brightly colored Adventure Time keychain dangling from it. “Ash, freeing you wasn’t part of the deal.” He let me worry for a moment before continuing. “You owe me a box of bear claws.”
I nodded. “You got it, man.”
“Let’s finish this,” Charles said, thumping his staff on the carpet. “The night’s not getting any younger.” He gave my battle damage a look over. “And from the look of it, neither are you.”
“Yeah.” I carefully opened the rough canvas bag and extracted the treasure inside: a little girl’s doll, a patchwork thing lovingly mended time and again, missing one brown button eye and a lot of years. It smi
led up at me in the dark, despite the accumulated abuse and disuse it had endured.
I glanced at Flora, holding out the doll, but she shook her head. “It ain’t for me to do,” she said simply. I wasn’t certain I understood, but I nodded.
I could do this. It was the least she deserved.
Maggie glared daggers at me as I approached, but I just gave her a smile. Hershel’s vines had stopped growing, but not before they’d covered her mouth, leaving the specter no other way to spew her hatred at me. Once close to her, I knelt down, getting on her level.
“You’ve been through a lot.” I rasped out the words. I didn’t really know what I should say or do, so I just went with my gut. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never wanted to have to hurt you, not like others hurt you. No one should’ve had to go through what you went through, and I’m sorry for my part in it. But it’s over now.”
I leaned in and spoke softly. “Maggie, it’s okay. You’re home again.” I turned the doll around, letting her see it, hoping the reminder was enough. Behind me, I could feel Mama Flora’s subtle magic.
Maggie’s eyes widened; I could see the memory returning, could feel it in the air, like the clear ringing of a silver bell just Next Door.
“Be at peace, Maggie. I forgive you. We all do.”
Her dark, hateful eyes melted away, along with the rest of the cracked ceramic mask nailed to her face. Rags drifted to the floor like dirty feathers falling free, to pop and crackle with static as Maggie Keys finally let go.
Vines turned brittle and dry as quickly as they had grown, falling in chunks to the floor.
The Maggie that they revealed was no longer a horrifying abomination, just a transparent little girl in a sundress.
She smiled at me twice, once with her mouth, once with her clear, peaceful eyes, before she faded away completely.
- - -
Blood Red Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 2) Page 27
