He's dead. The thought kept striking me again and again, a punch to my gut every time. He's dead.
“Rory,” I said, my voice sounding strangely dull. “Rory, he's not breathing.”
Rory ignored me and started walking around us, tracing a circle in the ground with something that glinted in the moonlight – a knife – muttering something under his breath. I understood, suddenly, how real this was. Somehow, I had convinced myself that I was dreaming. That this was all going to fade with the moonlight, and melt into the rising of the sun.
Looking upon my brother's slack expression, I knew suddenly that it wasn't a dream. It wasn't a game. Or if it was, we were playing for keeps and we had already lost.
This was actually happening.
“He's dead,” I said again, my voice now nearly a scream. I could hear the hysteria creeping into my words and I began to hyperventilate as a fresh wave of panic ripped through me. “Rory, he's not breathing! Rory, do something!”
Rory didn't respond. He continued tracing the circle around me. I watched him numbly as he dropped his knife and picked up something else. Some kind of herb bundle. His hands faltered momentarily as he lit it, the flame lighting up the darkness and casting his face in an orange glow. His features seemed skeletal and ethereal. He began to retrace his steps, the smoke obscuring his features. He was muttering something under his breath, but I couldn't make out the words and I didn’t care anymore.
My world crashed down around me. My brother was dead. And Rory didn't seem to care.
My brother was dead.
In the distance, I could hear something. The pounding of feet upon gravel. Some part of me realized that it had to be the witches. They'd found us. But it didn't matter, because we were too late. If we'd ever had a chance at all.
“Rory,” I said, my voice sounding strange and distant. “Rory, help him – he's not breathing.”
“Kendra,” Rory said harshly. “I need you to calm down right now. If I don't finish this circle, our one shot to do this is gone.”
I suddenly considered the possibility that Rory was gravely mentally ill. That it had somehow been all a ruse. That my brother was really, truly, dead. Maybe the witches were real – I couldn't explain any of what I had seen in any other way – but how did I know that Rory really wanted to save my brother? How did I know I could trust him?
And it was too late anyway. Because Gwydion wasn't breathing. Within days — maybe hours — he'd start to decompose. My reality narrowed down to the single realization that kept striking me over and over, threatening to undo every bit of safety I had ever felt: my brother was dead. My comfortable and calm world was rapidly unraveling at the seams and our hope of doing this was already gone.
Because Gwydion was dead.
Something broke inside of me.
I rushed at Rory, flinging myself at him without thinking, just as he finished encircling us with a thick ring of incense smoke.
Rory didn't even look at me.
He incanted a single word and my body was suddenly and completely out of my control. For an instant, it was almost exactly the same sensation I had felt in the diner. Like I was disconnected from my body in a quintessential way. Like I couldn’t move.
A second later, I realized it was much worse than that. Because my body began moving. I just wasn’t telling it to.
Against my will, my feet found purchase on the uneven land and my body laid down next to my brother's. I felt myself reach out, though I could no longer see him, and take Gwydion's hand. His flesh was cool and unyielding against mine.
“Please trust me,” Rory said, from somewhere above me. He sounded just shy of frantic. “We only have seconds to do this.”
I fought against the binds, but for the second time tonight, my flesh was no longer my own. My body didn't move an inch. Still, I gripped my brother's lifeless hand.
I realized then, that I was about to die.
“Stop!”
I couldn't look, but I imagined it came from the road. I could visualize a feminine figure standing next to the car, perhaps illuminated by the white glow of Rory’s headlights.
She spoke again, “This is madness, Rory!”
Another voice called out, “It’s not too late to stop this!”
“It’s way too late!” Rory shouted. “We’re doing this!”
“I command you to unbind your circle!” The feminine voice was closer now. Almost to the edge of the circle, I guessed.
“No! I love him, Deborah!” Rory said, something breaking in his voice. I could see his silhouette out of the corner of my eye. He was holding something in his hand that looked an awful lot like a knife. “And I don't care anymore. If he dies, nothing else matters to me!”
He did something then, a movement I didn’t quite catch. But I saw the effect. Around me, the circle erupted into a wall of light.
“You did this to me. You forced my hand.”
“Rory, no! Don’t do this!”
Rory didn’t answer. But he was suddenly looming over me, his face inscrutable in the darkness. The knife glinted silver in his hands.
My brother's hand was momentarily pulled from my grip. I felt the slice of something sharp on my palm. If I could have cried out, I would have. But for a split second, I didn't feel anything at all. Then pain rushed into my palm. I was bleeding.
“Rory!” Another voice called, a male voice. “You can’t do this! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“Oh, let him,” Another voice said. Feminine. Poisonous. I pictured the pretty young witch that had flown towards us in the diner. “If he wants to martyr himself, fine by me. We'll be here to clean up his mess when the sun rises.”
No one answered her, but I heard the sound of something heavy slamming into what sounded like a thick glass window. It was followed immediately by swearing.
From somewhere nearby, I heard soft chanting, rising in pitch. It sounded violent, ugly. Someone was casting a spell.
Then Rory grabbed my hand and suddenly, my brother's flesh was next to my own again. I felt Rory maneuvering Gwydion's fingers around mine, until they were interlaced. Then he wrapped something rough and cloth-like around our joined hands.
I realized that suddenly, Gwydion's flesh was warmer than it had been a moment before. Something slick trickled between our palms. Blood.
Rory muttered something under his breath and heat bloomed between my palm and Gwydion's. It felt as though a flame was caught between my brother's flesh and my own. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't exactly comfortable either.
The chanting rose in pitch and more voices joined. I could feel something strange, like a weight pressing down upon my chest. The witches were trying to break through the circle.
“I'm sorry,” Rory crouched down beside me and spoke so softly that only I could hear. Though I was prepared for it, I still inwardly gasped as I felt the blade of a knife cutting through the flesh of my other palm. “Kendra, please listen to me. We only have seconds until they break my circle. This is dangerous and it’s real. I promise you, we're going to get through this, and we're going to save him. Nothing else matters to me. But I won't do this without your agreeing to it. But if you say no, Gwydion will die.”
Biting his lip, Rory made a gesture above me.
Life rushed back into my body. Suddenly, I realized that I could move again. I blinked and sucked in a gasping breath.
He'd undone the spell on me.
A part of me — the sensible part — wanted to run.
Instead, I met Rory’s gaze and in the illumination cast by the glowing circle, I saw that his face was streaked with tears. There was a grave, imploring look on his face. I understood suddenly and completely that he’d meant it: he wouldn’t do this without my consent. If I said no, he would stop everything.
He had given me a choice. He had to know how frightened I felt. But now, at this crucial moment, he hadn't left me helpless. He'd given me permission to stop what
was happening. I could run if I wanted to, and I knew he wouldn't try to stop me. The coven would give me the waters of Lethe and they’d make me forget all of this. I would return to my safe and comfortable life.
Without my brother.
Would I ever know what had happened to him? Or would I just wake up tomorrow and he would suddenly be gone? Would I think that he had relapsed and vanished — again? Would I always be left wondering what had happened to him? Or would his body turn up somewhere? Would I be told some kind of plausible explanation, something heart-breaking but horribly believable? Would I ever learn the truth?
I wished, suddenly, that Rory had left me motionless. That he'd simply done this to me, so that I didn't have to consent to it. I was terrified and I felt as though my reality had fractured beyond repair. If I consented to this, there was no coming back from it. Rory was placing my brother’s life in my hands. He was asking me to lay down everything for Gwydion.
And I wanted to say no.
Except that I could feel Gwydion's lifeless hand in my own.
A memory rose in my mind, of Gwydion in the doorway, his face utterly blank and covered with a fine mist of blood. His eyes were wide as he stared at what he had done. Our uncle’s body on the floor, unmoving. And the horrible realization that my brother had just destroyed himself for me.
It was a debt I could never repay. I would have given anything to go back to that crucial moment, to have stopped it somehow. But I had been frozen in place. I hadn’t been strong enough to change a single thing.
Could I give up everything to save my brother, the way that he had for me all those years ago? Could I be strong enough to save him?
I said the only thing I could say. “Do it.”
Rory nodded, swallowing sharply. I saw a flash of fear in his eyes. A small part of him had been hoping I would say no.
Rory incanted something in that strange guttural language and slammed his palm to the ground.
The circle flamed around us, a brilliant light that seemed to seep into my bones.
I could feel the ground moving around me. As though it were making way for me. And then suddenly, the earth was all around me, choking off my breath. Or perhaps it was inside of me, moving through my veins, turning them to stone.
I let out a gasp, but no sound escaped, because the ground abruptly closed around my body.
I felt my heart galloping as fear and horror enveloped me. And then it fell silent in my chest.
CHAPTER NINE
The first thing I noticed about the underworld was that it was cold. It was the sort of cold that seemed to seep into my bones and freeze the marrow. I could still feel the dirt and rocks beneath my back, digging into my flesh. They felt harder now, as though frozen under a thin layer of frost.
I struggled to sit up.
I realized that I was no longer bound to my brother's body. In fact, I noticed immediately that the clearing was identical to the one I had laid down in, but it was strangely vacant. I was alone.
I took stock, finally allowing myself to see my surroundings.
The first thing I saw was the fog. Bone white, and roiling in tendrils across the ground like a stereotypical witch's cauldron. It was knee-deep and so thick that it obscured the ground beneath it entirely. There were tall trees around me, stretching impossibly high into the sky, with trunks as wide as I was tall. The sky, barely visible through the branches of the trees, was a strange shade of charcoal gray.
For one horrifying moment, I considered the possibility that Rory and I had somehow become separated. He'd said it himself: the underworld was a big place. How would we find each other again?
Except, distantly, another part of myself could feel him. I couldn't see him, but I somehow knew that he was in front of me, perhaps thirty feet away. Strange.
And I scrambled across the frosty ground, through the blanket of fog. And sure enough, there he was. He was lying on the ground, on his side as though sleeping. He was almost entirely shrouded by the icy fog. Somehow, seeing him lying there brought it home for me.
This was really happening, I realized. We had crossed into the underworld, and it had happened because of a spell. Though I was both awed and stunned by the implications of that, I was also faintly angry that the rules of the universe weren't what I'd always thought they were.
I couldn’t believe I’d said yes. That I had agreed to this.
A deeper and more urgent part of me didn't particularly care about any of that. The memory of Gwydion's cold flesh against mine was still fresh in my mind. We were here to save him.
And if we succeeded, a voice in the back of my mind reminded me, Gwydion would become a witch. He would be one of them. I felt a chill rip through me at the thought. I wondered, for the first time, how much someone changed after they became a witch. What if he wasn't the same person anymore? What if becoming a witch made you evil?
Steeling myself, I shook Rory awake.
He sat up immediately and took a deep shuddering breath. Strangely, though it felt like the dead of winter, I couldn't see his breath fogging in front of him. Or, since we were in the literal underworld, maybe it wasn't really that strange.
“Well,” He said with a sigh, looking around. “I haven't missed this place.”
I held out my hand. He took it and climbed to his feet. His skin was surprisingly warm to the touch. Mine felt as though it were encased in ice.
“You said that my blood will lead us to Gwydion. How?”
“The spell I used tied your essence to Gwydion's and it tied mine to yours. It's definitely working, otherwise we'd both be here by ourselves.”
I frowned, but at least that explained how I'd been able to sense him. Perhaps I could sense Gwydion in the same way. But suddenly, I realized I couldn’t remember him. I couldn’t remember what his face looked like. My mind felt as though it was wrapped in a layer of thick cotton and my thoughts were slow and sluggish, as though the cold was seeping into my mind, as well as my body.
“This place can be rough at first,” Rory said, giving me a nervous look. “Try focusing on him.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. I focused on Gwydion, but the details of him were blurry in my mind. I tried to summon up his face, but it wouldn’t come. I could remember his hand in mine though. It was cold, just like my own. Everything was so cold.
“It's not working,” I said softly, my voice sounding strangely dreamy. “I can't sense him. I can’t sense anything.”
That wasn’t good, but I was having difficulty remembering why. I felt suddenly very tired. How had I gotten here? I wasn’t supposed to be here, was I? But that didn’t matter now. All I wanted was to relax, to lay down on the hard ground and be still. I no longer felt the icy chill biting into me. Instead I felt warm, languid.
If I could just lie down for a moment…
My eyes drifted shut. I felt my body sag against Rory’s.
“You can do this,” Rory said, sounding as though he was fighting to remain calm. “What is your strongest memory of him? Focus on that.”
My mind suddenly conjured the memory I knew I would never be able to forget, the memory that haunted me every time I closed my eyes. Gwydion standing in my doorway, holding a gun in his hands. His face was spattered with a fine mist of blood and his expression was completely blank. In that moment, even as a child, I knew that my brother had just destroyed himself to save me. That there was no coming back from what had just happened.
The memory was seared into my mind – I would never be able to let go of it, no matter how much I longed to.
It was like icy water had been dumped onto me, shocking me awake.
My left hand began to burn. What's more, it felt suddenly like a magnetic force had grabbed hold of it.
I blinked and sat up.
“I can feel him,” I said thickly. Anguish caught in my chest, but I pushed it down into a dark and secret place in my heart.
The numbness fell away from my limb
s. But I could feel it lingering nearby, awaiting its chance to overtake me again.
I stood and turned to follow the pull. It led to a narrow path cut through a thick copse of trees.
Without a word, Rory followed me into the darkness.
CHAPTER TEN
“These are the ghost roads,” Rory said, after we'd passed through the woods and onto a paved road that looked suspiciously like the highway on the mountain. In fact, it was virtually identical, with the steep plunge on our left and the sheer rock face of the mountain on our right. That strange magnetic pull within me was guiding us down the mountain. It was utterly deserted.
“The ghost roads lead to all places in the underworld, eventually,” Rory paused, then added, “Stay on the beaten path. There are fates much worse than death here. Whatever you do, don’t go into the fog. No matter what you see or hear.”
“What’s in the fog?”
“Horrors,” He said flatly. “But they're afraid of the light; they won't come near it. Just stay on the path and you'll be fine.”
“What happens if I do go into the fog?”
“You don't want to know.”
I suppressed a shudder and gave the drop-off on our left a nervous glance. I half-expected to see a horrifying Chthulu-like monster slithering out from the darkness. I felt as though we were being watched. Though I could see or hear no other signs of life, it was somehow as though we weren't quite as alone as we seemed to be.
“What will the witches do, once they break through your circle?”
“They won’t be able to, now.”
“Weren’t they about to break through the spell?”
“They were,” Rory admitted. “Now that we’re here, they won’t be able to break through until sunrise, until the claiming is complete.”
“There’s a whole coven of them. How can you be so sure?”
The Claiming Page 5
