by Dana Piazzi
“Just around the…” Simon stopped dead and pulled her back into the shadow of an ice covered doorway, much to Tessa’s surprise. He melted his semi-corporeal form against her, and placed his hand over her mouth. Tessa felt a moment of weird tingling as his transparent hand stopped her cold.
Tessa breathed in slowly as she waited in silence. The door opened and Elena slinked out, purring like a kitten. Two men came behind her, carrying a wilted, crumpled figure. It took her a minute to realize that the figure the two men held was an old man. He looked as if he were ninety years old, but she knew better. His head hung down, and for a moment, she saw blond hair and felt her heart tear with worry. Simon shook his head quickly to let her know that it wasn’t Ian.
They paraded through the palace of ice around them and the guards threw the body into a room off to the side as if it were nothing more than trash. Elena silenced them by freezing them in place, and paraded out the door without a backward glance at the body as it hit the floor with a thud.
Simon and Tessa cringed at the dull thud, but they stayed where they were, crouched and waiting. A moment later, the hall was silent and Simon released her, and floated over to the room. He slid past the frozen guards and stopped in front of the door. His hand shook as he reached for the doorknob. Tessa hurried to his side and moved him out of the way, knowing that one of them had to look.
She turned the handle and opened the door, but jumped back and wanted to wretch. The closet held several bodies, one of which was Simon’s. They lay piled together like trash. Tessa slammed the door and leaned against it. “Don’t look. You don’t need to see it. You know what it is.”
Simon looked like he would push her out of the way, but something in her eyes warned him not to. He dropped his head and turned back toward the other door. Tessa crept after him and they slid in the door together. Four tanks sat occupied while the fifth stood empty, a dark testament to the increase of Elena’s need for youth.
“She killed another one,” Simon whispered as he pulled her into the room. “I’m too late.”
Tessa glanced at the empty tube and felt a chill run over her. She’d thought that she was as cold as she could get, but apparently, she’d been wrong. Even though there were icicles hanging everywhere and frost heavy on everything, her heart seized up at the sight of Ian in his tube. She ran to him and knocked on the glass, and he looked up at her from behind his thirty-year-old eyes.
Ian raised his head when the door opened, praying that she hadn’t returned. He’d watched the witch kill two men since he’d been held captive here, and he knew with certainty that eventually he would be next. He shivered and relieved himself inside the tube, not even caring that he hadn’t done that since he was a child. His whole life flashed in front of him. Damn! It was short. There was so much that he regretted, one of those things was not telling Tessa how he felt. He’d been a coward, not wanting to screw up what they had, and he’d let that fear keep him from telling her what he now knew was in his heart. He just hoped that he’d have the chance.
His eyes popped as a semi-transparent form followed Tessa into the room. He could almost believe that he was dreaming another pain filled hallucination, if not for the worry in her beautiful eyes. She stormed across the room, skidding on ice, and slammed her hand against the glass. The tube rattled, but didn’t crack. The ghost materialized behind her and Ian could see him mouthing something to her. She shook her head and smacked the glass again and again, but with no effect. The semi-transparent hands of the specter wrapped around hers and pulled her off.
Tessa turned and looked at him and her eyes began to glow. She raised her hands and they began to burn. Ian shrugged back against the tube as it began to glow.
Tessa screamed, channeling all of her anger. Simon had told her to try, and, suddenly, the fire had wrapped around her from inside. The air around them had heated first, and then her hands had burned. She began to scream, but held on as she locked eyes with Ian. He cringed back, but had nowhere to go as his tube and those of the three other men began to glow and burn. Suddenly, the glass began to crack, and all at once, all of the tubes shattered, releasing the men inside.
Tessa ran to Ian and pulled him into her arms. She stroked his hair back, away from his forehead, and couldn’t believe the change in him in a few short hours. Ian looked like he was thirty-five instead of seventeen. But his eyes seemed to have aged several decades more, though. Ian opened his mouth to speak, but found that his voice was gone, thanks to hours of screaming in the tank. Tessa smiled at him, and Ian smiled back, glad to remember her, glad to remember someone from his real life. It was like a fog had lifted the moment that he’d seen her smile.
Tessa ran her hands over his face to try and tell him not to speak, when a voice slithered into the silence.
“Get away from my pets!” the voice bellowed, and Tessa turned to see the woman that all of the men feared.
She recognized her immediately as the woman from outside the movie theater and growled at her. She couldn’t believe that she actually growled, but something about this woman really rubbed her the wrong way. She had felt it last night, but now she knew why she disliked her so much. Darkness was rolling off her in waves. It was like Tessa had been asleep, and now she’d awoken to her powers and herself. She could clearly see the darkness clouding the room.
“They don’t belong to you, witch!” Tessa growled fiercely, standing in front of Ian. “They are free spirits with free will and you will let them go now!”
Elena threw her head back and laughed. Many before had thought it a beautiful sound, but Tessa heard the sharpness of breaking glass within it and knew the evil that it covered up. Elena’s green eyes twinkled with madness, and Tessa could see it cover them and take them over like a thundercloud. The room began to swirl with snow, and Tessa held on as the wind began to rip and tear at her.
“You do not run things here, little one! You are no match for me! I don’t know who has been telling tales!” She glanced behind Tessa to where Simon floated silently. “But you are not going to survive this! You are nothing!” She waved her hand and Simon screamed before being sucked back into an empty tube. He pounded at the glass, but didn’t fade through. Elena smiled and blew him a kiss that clearly announced that she would deal with him later as she walked toward Tessa. A storm of epic proportions materialized within the room, shooting ice and killing frost. Elena smiled as she walked through the storm and stopped inches away from Tessa, with not a hair out of place
“Why would the last light witch care, anyway, when no one has stopped me until now? I’ve killed thousands and no one cared. You are all the same, little goody two shoes! You pretend to care, but it is to save your own skin! You are just like the others, and no one can save you!”
Tessa felt the blast of arctic wind rip through her as the air around them changed. Suddenly, images of all Elena’s past victims swirled around. Countless images of men dying at her feet flashed in front of them like a movie screen. The colors swirled and images of the women in her family from her grandmother Mathias to her own mother popped up one by one. In all of them, the women she loved and respected turned their backs on magic and left the world to fend for itself. Elena laughed merrily, a silky sound filled with madness.
Tessa screamed a denial, but knew it was true. They had all known about Elena and her appetite, but had done nothing. Tessa felt the shame at her family’s betrayal of mankind to her bones, and Elena smiled as the pain showed on Tessa’s face. Ian reached out and put his hand on hers and the cold numbed them both. She locked eyes with him and saw the sadness and the resolution there. He had already given up. Tessa shook her head in denial and her teary green eyes caught and held Simon’s in the glass tube. His eyes were full of fire, and if she could have heard him over the wind and her own thundering heart, she was sure that he would have been telling her to get off her ass.
Elena turned to look at Simon, too, and she tisked and shook her finger at him. “When I’m done with her, I’
ll take care of you. I will teach you, ghost or not, what happens to a pet that bites its master!”
Simon didn’t seem scared. His mouth simply tightened in response.
Tessa felt anger blaze inside of her as Elena looked at Simon. Something inside her didn’t want her near him. Her eyes began to burn as the shame mingled with anger burned inside of her. Anger at the women in her family for walking away, anger at herself for doubting her own power, and mostly, anger at the demon standing across the room for daring to touch what was hers. Tessa stood slowly, shrugging off Ian’s hand, and ignoring his imploring look. She came to her feet and faced the torrent of wind and ice, which was slowly freezing them all.
Elena raised one dark brow and smiled at her as she tapped her lips with her red-tipped finger. “Well, are you going to try after all, little bug?” she asked with a laugh. “I didn’t think you had it in you! I thought you were just going to lay there and die.”
“No such luck,” Tessa said fiercely as all the anger in her blood bubbled to the surface. She felt her temperature rise, but embraced it. She fell back into her power and allowed it to engulf her. She felt her hair begin to float on the warm wind as her whole body began to burn. “You are done killing, bitch!” she snarled savagely. “Your fun stops here!”
Elena didn’t even seem worried as she watched Tessa. She simply smiled and raised another eyebrow in challenge. Tessa let the blaze engulf her as she reached her hands out and focused on the tube holding Simon. The tube began to glow again and heated up to a brilliant red. As Elena watched, the tube melted away, freeing him. Elena snarled in disbelief, her face aging a little as she stared at her handiwork beginning to fade.
“You will die for that, niece or not!” Elena snarled as her mouth opened, revealing rows of sharp teeth and a quickly aging face. A surge of killing wind and snow blew through the room, forming a tornado of ice and snow, which quickly froze Ian and the other men in the room.
Tessa pushed outward and expanded the wall of heat, but it wasn’t enough to reach them. Elena stepped closer, pushing against Tessa’s heat with her arctic cold. She laughed when Tessa’s line of defense moved inward just a fraction, sure that she had won.
The ice traveled over the floor and encased Tessa’s legs. She tried to melt it, but Elena kept coming. Tessa felt a sliver of fear in her heart as the ice reached her waist.
Suddenly, Simon materialized before her, the only being not frozen solid by the ice. “Don’t do this! Believe in yourself!” He put his hand on her face and she felt heat for just a moment, before he, too, was frozen solid, his semi-transparent form falling to the ground with a solid thud.
Tessa’s rage burned brighter as Elena smiled.
Elena laughed and kicked Simon’s frozen body out of the way. “I keep trying to kill him and he just won’t die! I guess he can’t get enough of me. Now, it’s your turn, little white witch! It’s sad, really, that you are the best they have to send against me. I’ll be doing the light side a favor by killing you, because you are so pathetic.”
She reached out to touch Tessa’s face, the only part of her not encased in ice, but jumped back at the scorching heat flying off her. Tessa’s green eyes blazed red as she pushed her back. Elena pushed back with her cold, but stumbled when Tessa broke free of the ice, and large pieces fell around her. Tessa’s hands blazed with an even hotter fire as she walked toward Elena. All around them, things were thawing, and Elena stumbled and fell as everything began coming back to life.
Tessa growled and blasted her with a fire so hot that it was white. The fire surrounded her, and Elena began to scream and writhe. She began to age rapidly with each inch of ice that melted, and she resembled an old crone in moments. She lay shivering on the ground, but Tessa felt no sympathy for this evil demon.
Elena looked up at Tessa, her green eyes so like Tessa’s own, still blazing and filled with madness. “You cannot win! You know nothing and I have lived forever! Evil will triumph!”
Tessa laughed as she kicked her in the chest, satisfied with the snap she heard when Elena’s ribs cracked under the pressure. “You never stood a chance! Don’t you know that the good guys always win? And sweetheart, I am most definitely the good guy!”
With a final kick, she shot another blast of white hot heat at the shriveled heap on the ground that used to be Elena. The final years melted off her face and the skin slid off the bone, leaving a blackened skeleton, which eventually faded, leaving nothing but a dark pile of ashes. The room shook and began to fill with light as the ice continued to melt. Out of the ashes where Elena had melted, there came hundreds of shades. Each one was a beautiful color of light blue, green, pink, and yellow. They fluttered toward her and then flew away like brilliant butterflies into the lightening darkness. As each one passed, Tessa saw a face of one of Elena’s victims. Men in various stages of life, and even a few women. They all thanked her on their way up. Tessa looked for Simon, afraid to see him go, but more afraid not to.
Ian grabbed Tessa’s arm and pulled her around to face him. “Run,” he said quickly, pulling her toward the door. “The whole place is collapsing.”
Tessa turned to run and saw that Ian and the three other men running with them were young once again. Tessa smiled, but couldn’t help looking back once more for Simon. She felt her heart shudder as his ghostly form did not appear, but she knew without a doubt that he had helped to save them all. Ian jerked Tessa’s hand and they all turned and escaped just as the roof collapsed.
Three days later, Tessa sat on her front porch swing with Ian, rocking like they had since they were kids. Maybe that’s the problem, she thought to herself with a sad smile. She’d spent all these years thinking that she loved him, but now she realized that she was using him to keep herself safe from getting hurt. He had been an easy wall to erect, and now that it was gone, she could see it all.
Of course, now Ian would finally have the talk. “I do love you,” Ian said softly as he looked down at his shoelaces. “I wish I had told you earlier, before all this, but I didn’t know. I thought I had all the time in the world.”
Tessa nudged him with her shoulder. “I know you do, but it’s not the way you should love me for us to be together. It would be easy, but easy is not love.”
“I could change your mind,” Ian said with a confident smile that once would have melted her heart.
“I know you’d like to try, but it’s not right.” Tessa shook her head, still barely believing that these words were coming out of her mouth. She had spent years writing their last names together on her notebooks and dreaming of a future with him, but now she knew that one look into Simon’s eyes had changed everything.
Simon had never reappeared after the building collapsed and Tessa knew that he was gone forever. She knew she should be happy for him, that he was able to move on, but her heart was sad when she thought about that sweet Italian boy who’d saved her. She’d only known him for a heartbeat, but it had changed her forever.
The police believed that Ian had been kidnapped by a serial killer who had been working the area for years on and off, and the pile of bodies and bones inside confirmed it. They were talking about having him on Oprah and Dr. Phil to talk about his “experience”. Tessa had stayed out of it, claiming that the men had escaped on their own, and they all seemed content to go with her story. Of course, her family had not been able to deny the truth now, but there was a long way to go to fix those burnt bridges.
Ian stood and stretched, wrapping his coat tighter around himself. Tessa knew that they would never see the snow and ice the same way again. Tessa knew that she would never look at fire the same way, either. Ian leaned over her, and for a moment, Tessa thought that he would kiss her. Her heart caught in her throat as she waited and he pulled back with a smile, hugging her instead.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” he whispered softly in her ear as he let her go.
Tessa smiled and squeezed his hand. “You’ll be the first to know,” she said softly as he
walked down the steps and into the fading darkness.
Tessa closed her eyes as her smile faded. Simon’s dark eyes floated in front of her mind’s eye as they always did when she closed her eyes. She knew that she hadn’t known him long, a nanosecond really, but he’d altered her and saved her. He’d believed that she could do anything, when Ian hadn’t, when even she hadn’t. That kind of faith changed things irrevocably and sometimes you couldn’t go back. She rubbed her eyes and wished that she could stop the tears that trickled down her cheeks, but she knew there was no stopping them. She wished that she had the chance to know him better, her savior. But now, at least, he was in a better place.
“Why are you crying?” The voice came from the bottom of the steps, curious and sweet, and for a moment, Tessa thought she was hallucinating.
Tessa kept her eyes closed, almost wanting to believe that she was going crazy after all she had been through. “Because I’m sad,” she said, praying that this hallucination would last just a little longer. She knew it was selfish, but she missed him.
The creak of the boards on the porch seemed loud in the twilight silence as he stepped up and sat down beside her. Tessa felt the seat sag with the extra weight, but still didn’t open her eyes. She wondered which nice padded cell they would stick her in after this.
“You’re much too pretty to be sad,” he said, an inch away. His hands stroked over her hair and he tugged it gently. “And much too hot.”
Tessa opened one eye at his pun and gasped as the face from her dreams swam into her watery focus. He smiled brightly as his lip ring glinted in the sunlight. His dark curly hair looked freshly showered and he smelled like shampoo and man.
“Simon?” she asked in disbelief as he smiled again and moved closer. “Are you really here?” Thousands of thoughts swirled around in her mind. But the last image she had of him lying frozen on the floor would be forever etched into her mind.
